This farm kid used to laugh at the Ridgeline...yuppie truck, uglier than an Avalanche, etc. Then I started looking for a true mid-size pickup; there are no others. Chevy had a good-looking one on the drawing-board a couple years ago (not the Colorado) and the Dodge Dakota is still just a bigger mini (tow cap. w/a V-6: 3700# vs 55K for the Honda.) The Ford Sport-Trac is far less of a real truck than the R-Line--can't even put a Class 3 hitch on that chopped Explorer. Wanted something user-friendly enough for my wife to take her 90-year-old mother to the doc on a snowy day but rugged enough to run across fields and through woods for hunting. After the farmer next door bought his second Ridgeline and let me drive it, I broke down and bought a nice used '06 and, for a daily driver, I wouldn't trade it for any Big 3 4WD pickup. I drive munucipal plow trucks, and that little Honda tracks, goes and stops as good as any vehicle I've driven in snow. The rev-happy OHC V-6 and gear-hunting 5-speed automatic can, depending on one's mood, be fun or annoying; the cab is fairly spacious; I've never seen a bob-tailed crew cab pickup that can be called good-looking, but that razor-back styling becomes more tolerable every day.
Also, most of the used Ridgelines coming up for sale in this area have unusually high miles for their ages, and they seem to sell fairly quickly, maybe mostly because they're perceived as an economy truck (although gas mileage isn't as good as expected; I've heard it actually improves with more miles on the engine but can't prove it.)
All in all, I'd bet 1/2 of the pickup owners out there would be satisfied with a Ridgeline if they actually owned one.
