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2008 Honda Odyssey Touring Video

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2008 Honda Odyssey Touring
Created: 08/04/2008
Video description: It's got lots of room, and it's got lots of tech! But is that enough to win over Brian Cooley?

2008 Honda Odyssey Touring Video Transcript

>> Ah yes, San Francisco's ultimate view and when you see that, don't you think, huh, what's the ultimate minivan? I don't neither, but if I did, the word on the street is it's the Honda Odyssey. We've got the Odyssey Touring, the one that's loaded. Let's go find out if it deserves its vaunted rap. ^M00:00:19 [ Music ] ^M00:00:25

>> Now when you hear the Honda Odyssey Touring is loaded, they're not pulling your leg, it's loaded. Navigation is standard, the multi-disc is standard, the crazy front and rear head unit here is standard, Bluetooth is standard, the whole rear seat entertainment deal is standard. Power doors everywhere, the back, both of the sides, it's all standard. Let's start with the navigation system. Help me stifle a yawn. I've seen this one for what -- five years now. It's Honda's standard rig, with the soft fuzzy fonts and kind of a childish rendering of graphics, at least by today's standards. It's not a bad system in terms of usage because first of all it is large. It is a touch screen with great big easy-to-use buttons that we've seen a hundred times before and notice I'm underway and hello, yes, I can enter a destination like a grown up should be allowed to while driving. As I mentioned you've got voice command also on this guy. That's one of these bewildering number of buttons over here on this Honda Accord steering wheel. You've got voice for the phone, you've got another voice for the voice command. You've got to keep those straight. Something else you gotta keep straight is a little bit of a tacky array of tucked-on audio gear. First of all, we've got our head unit right here. That's nicely integrated though bewildering because it controls front and rear. Down here, is another optical disc drive, I'm not entirely sure if it's dedicated to the rear or not. In here, I've got another drive that's a six-disc changer. The shifter ergonomics are a little odd, it takes some getting used to. It's kind of like a cross between that little weird shifter on the Prius and a formatted gearshift in the 1974 Alfa Spider. That's a weird mix. This transmission though, is amazingly sophisticated as a transmission that is getting the basics done. It is so smooth and so silky your kids will never have an excuse for dropping their damn juice box all over the floor. Now part of the credit for that smooth driving experience certainly has to go to the engine. It's a 3.5-liter V-6. It's got 240 horsepower, a similar number of foot-pounds of torque. It's a little gutless most of the time. The mileage isn't great. It's 17 city 25 highway combined 20. That's rather the bubble, if you're using it for all of its bulk regularly in carrying lots of kids and crap, it's not a bad number. But if you don't use the size of this vehicle, it's kind of a disastrous number. Hah, it's kind of nice back here too. You've got a great middle HVAC docks, point-down your own lights. Here's a real honest-to-gosh climate control panel for the rear. Let's see, this is our drop-down remote control, detachable, remote for the rear seat entertainment system that looks to be about a 9-inch wide screen LCD. I can spend some time back here -- yee, who's driving? ^M00:03:14 [ Music ] ^M00:03:16

>> Close. Anyway, let's price our Odyssey Touring. Like I said, it's all in there, folks. It's 40 grand -- like 40,300. It's not a driver's car. But let's say you're that person who has an M5, this is a nice minivan to go with it. ^M00:03:33 [ Music ]

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2008 Honda Odyssey Touring Review

Editors' rating

The good: The 2008 Honda Odyssey Touring uses an advanced cylinder deactivation system to save gas. The navigation system's points-of-interest database includes Zagat-rated restaurants. Rear seat DVD is standard.

The bad: The electronics in the Odyssey look thrown together, without any coherent design. The sound system doesn't offer surround, which would be nice with the DVD.

The bottom line: Even with a redesign, the 2008 Honda Odyssey looks like a minivan from the last century, and its cabin tech barely gets it into this one. But it offers practical and economical transportation for a lot of people.

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2008 Honda Odyssey Touring Specs

Manufacturer: American Honda Motor Company
Part number: 100952865

Product Basic Spec
  • Product Basic Spec

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2008 Honda Odyssey Touring Prices

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