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2017 Honda Ridgeline Flexes Its Bed In Stiffness Test, Passes

2017 Honda Ridgeline 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
Honda decided to step into the Ford-Chevy war of pick-up trucks with its 2017 RidgelineThe all-new pick-up truck from Honda comes with a composite bed, and Honda replicated last week’s comparison of truck beds started by Chevrolet.

For those of you that don’t recall, or have missed the news, Chevrolet wanted to prove that its high-strength steel pick-up truck bed of the new Silverado fares better than Ford’s all-aluminum solution for the F-150.

Since most pick-up truck owners would probably never do it like in the test, but rather load them in a responsible manner, we have a few question marks regarding the utility of these tests. However, it shows the lengths manufacturers are willing to undertake to attract more customers.

Among the tests employed involved using a loader to drop landscaping blocks into the two truck beds. The other involved casually throwing a tool box into the bed, as if it were accidentally dropped without too much care or attention.

Honda put its 2017 Ridgeline truck to the first of the tests. The Japanese manufacturer wanted to show the strength and sturdiness of the new composite bed. So it brought a loader full of landscaping stones and dropped them into the Ridgeline. They threw 60 rough cut stones, each weighing about 14 (6.3 kg) to 16 pounds (7.2 kg) each.

Meanwhile, in the test devised by Chevrolet, the American brand used 55 landscaping blocks weighing approximately 825 pounds (347 kilograms). That means an average of 15 lbs per brick, the equivalent of 6.3 kg. While Honda does not mention the height of the drop, Chevrolet performed their test from five feet above the bed floor.

Considering the observations written above, we cannot say these tests match in severity. Sure, they seem to be similar, but one cannot be certain of this by watching manufacturer-filmed videos. We can only hope that Consumer Reports picks up the story and does a scientific retry, in which all relevant pick-up trucks are tested in the same conditions.

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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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