It’s been a bit since our last episode of the Honda Passport TrailSport long-term series. But then again, it’s been the dead of winter here in the Midwest, and I covered snow- and cold-weather driving at the turn of the year, so it’s been, uh, more of the same since then. Luckily, it’s early April now, and we’ve had a few days of fair weather recently—even got up into the 70s for a random, freak weekend. So, I did what any logical person would do: I went off-roading.

With plenty of sunshine and mild temperatures on our side, I packed up both kids and the usual gear (tow strap, air pressure gauge, flag, gloves, tools, etc.) and headed to the off-road park. Now, despite having the Passport for nearly seven months by that point, I hadn’t gone off-roading yet. I was saving that for the end of my time with it in case I rolled the thing or something. And given that I didn’t go on the first media drive of this thing—that was Andrew Collins—this was also my first time off-roading the new Passport, period. I had done so in the previous-gen, but not this one. I was truly looking forward to it, given my experience with the more-capable-than-you’d-think Pilot TrailSport.

If you want to revisit previous installments before reading the latest update, here are the shortcuts:

The Basics

In case you’re not super familiar with the Passport’s specs, here are the basics: the 3.5-liter V6 produces 285 horsepower and 262 lb-ft of torque and is paired with a 10-speed automatic transmission. Honda’s second-gen Intelligent Variable Torque Management four-wheel-drive system sends power to all four wheels, while Trail Torque Logic with Snow, Trail, and Sand modes manages power, torque, and slip settings depending on trail conditions.

The TrailSport trim offers 8.3 inches of ground clearance, underbody protection, and knobby 31-inch General Grabber all-terrain tires on 18-inch wheels. Approach and departure angles are 23° and 23.1°, respectively. There’s a front MacPherson strut setup and a multi-link setup in the rear, with trim-specific tuning. There’s also Hill-Start Assist and Hill-Descent Control, and surround-view cameras (including front camera) to help on- and off-road.

Off-Roading

TrailSport is a comprehensive upgrade that’s not just for looks. No, it doesn’t turn a Honda SUV into a Wrangler or a Defender, and yes, it’s a huge sales hook for Honda to appeal to “rugged-look enthusiasts,” but to say it’s purely cosmetic would be wrong. Even if the hardware upgrades don’t look so intense (though the suspension and tires alone play a huge role in its capability), it’s the tuning and how it all comes together that truly elevate the Passport’s off-road chops.

Having visited this off-road park in Northwest Indiana for over a decade, I know the trails there pretty well, and I’ve driven dozens of vehicles there over the years. Given that the terrain was fairly dry and there weren’t many patches of snow or even mud, I ventured on the same trail that I had most recently taken a Lexus GX550 and a Defender 90 before that. A bit ambitious, but there are enough alternatives to slip into an easier trail along the way should I need to.

The first detail that stood out was how compliant the suspension was. As I’ve said in my reviews, the suspension can feel quite soft and springy on the road, especially when speeding around town, but in crater-filled, rutted trails, the Passport felt right at home. Wheel articulation at low and moderate speeds was great, and the General Grabbers felt up to the task when climbing up or slipping down hills. I mostly stuck to Trail driving mode, which allowed generous wheel slip on surfaces with loose dirt and kept throttle input smooth on uphills.

After peddling up a rocky creek with about a foot of water, I lined up for a steep and technical climb that featured a big boulder protruding from the ground on the left side near the top, while below, some gnarly tree roots stuck out on the right side. Having done it before, the trick is to keep the car all the way to the left, as close as possible to the wall of dirt, but not so much that it slides to the right due to too much sideways tilt. If that happens, you’ll need two new doors from the car resting against the tree roots and rocks. If you want to get through this with minimal risk and stress, you gotta keep a steady speed despite the steep incline and the need to maneuver the wheel. If you want to make things more exciting, you can creep up slowly and really feel the suspension, the tires, and the terrain software do their thing. You can also hear the loose dirt getting crushed under the tires. It’s a great feeling.

I took it up pretty slowly, and even decided to stop at the most critical point, mostly because the Passport felt so sure-footed. My assistant (a.k.a son) took some photos, though remember, none of these obstacles look as intense in photos as they are in real life. I can reassure you, this was not a light challenge.

Happy with its performance, I kept going on this same trail, digging into some truly deep ruts that tested the Passport’s ground clearance. The 8.3 inches of ground clearance on tap felt adequate, and you don’t always want more than that on a street-driven daily. It’s actually the same as a Jeep Grand Cherokee and 0.5 inches more than a Ford Bronco Sport Big Bend. A Defender with the standard suspension offers 9 inches. That said, when you venture into a trail that’s mostly traversed by vehicles with 11+ inches of clearance, you’re going to bottom out in a few places and drag the bottom through the rest. I felt confident in the Passport’s underbody protection, and despite a few big clunks, I never lost traction, got hung up, or caused any damage.

After a few medium-speed runs through the sand, I headed toward the quarry section of the park, where there are some very technical trails, mostly made of rock. I knew this would be a challenge for the Passport given its ride height, but I went for it anyway.

Next thing I knew, I had the front left and rear right in the air, and the SUV was teeter-tottering over a rock formation. It felt unnerving from the inside, but the Passport never felt like it was being pushed beyond its limits. The brakes kept the tires intermittently clamped down, while I, little by little, made my way down to level ground. In fact, that was the takeaway of the day: despite being put through challenges no ordinary owner would ever do, it never lost its composure. It never lost that typical cool-as-a-cucumber Honda attitude.

The next obstacle put the SUV’s approach and departure angles to the test, and while I had to bail out of a more aggressive approach because I didn’t want to damage the front bumper, this other alternative would surely drag the rear. Once again, I found myself in an uncomfortable driving position, my body leaning against the door because of the tilt of the rocks. With my son spotting, I inched forward while taking the best line up the rocks. Suddenly, the middle of the car bottomed out, but I had enough momentum to keep it moving forward. Then, the trailer hitch started dragging, but I kept going until I could fully climb out of the hole. Phew.

Through all of this, we were listening to music, had our seat warmers on, and had a decent view of the trail thanks to its many cameras. It’s not the sophisticated Defender I off-roaded for several days in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, but it became evident that this mainstream SUV could kick some serious ass off-road. I wasn’t surprised. Not one bit.

Verdict

No one, and I really mean no one, will put their Passport, bought with their hard-earned cash, through the kind of stuff I did. Not because people aren’t adventurous, but because 99.9% of these will be daily drivers, and the folks who want a trail-rated machine will buy something else. Still, it’s great to know just how capable it is with literally zero modifications.

After 12,000 on-road miles, it was 10 or so off-road miles that made me love my long-term Passport that much more. It’s such a versatile and capable SUV that never ceases to amaze. If anything, the fact that I couldn’t permanently disable the parking sensor warning sound was the only negative that day, though I could mute them once they started going off.

Email the author at jerry@thedrive.com

Pro-4X is Nissan‘s dedicated off-road brand—a competitor to the Jeep Trailhawks and Toyota TRD Pros of the world. It’s synonymous with extra ground clearance, knobbier tires, and locking differentials—the sorts of things you want if you do serious wheeling. So when Nissan invited me to sample its lineup of 4×4-ready Frontier and Armada Pro-4Xes at Silver Lake Sand Dunes in western Michigan, I was immediately game.

What do all those mechanical upgrades translate to out here on sand? In a word: overkill. To be fair, we got lucky in the grip department. After a dry summer and early fall, our trip to Silver Lake happened to come on the heels of a burst of rain. Contrary to most other performance driving situations, water actually gives you better grip on sand, packing it heavy and tight beneath your tires. Dry sand behaves more like an uncooperative liquid than anything resembling a hard surface, gleefully flowing away from your contact patches. With enough grip, navigating Silver Lake comes down to ground clearance and a little bit of momentum—and the Nissans offer both in spades.

The former, of course, is baked in. In the case of the Armada, it’s further augmented by the settings of its fancy air suspension. You get between 9.6 and 9.9 inches of ground clearance with the standard car (and a bit less with the Nismo), but the extra lift baked into the Pro-4X and Platinum Reserve models provides another two inches on top of that, for a max of 11.6. The Frontier has to make do with a fixed ride height, but the Pro-4X has nearly an inch more ground clearance than the SV 4×4.

Momentum, however, is a different story. If you’re a racing fan, you might associate the term with cars that are down on power relative to their competitors and thus likely to struggle if they can’t capitalize on their typical advantages on technical courses. On track, momentum management can be the difference between finishing first and finishing last. Out here, it often determines whether you finish at all.

Despite my earlier allusions to wheel-to-wheel racing, this is what you might call more of a PvE (“Player vs. Environment”) type situation than PvP (“Player vs. Player”). That was especially true in mid-October, when we convoyed out to the dunes. By the time we arrived, the lakeside town had long cleared out for the season. 95% of the time, we had acres of park to ourselves in every direction. The effect was magnified after Nissan’s chase crew cut us loose with a radio and spoken assurances that they’d be able to locate us should anything go awry.

The rhythm of climbing sand dunes is simple to grasp but tricky to master. Ideally, you generate all the speed you need as quickly as possible, letting gravity bleed it off as you climb. If you time everything correctly, you’ll arrive at the peak with just enough inertia to tip your nose over the crest, but no more. Arrive with too little speed, and you’ll bog down before you reach the top. Get there too hot, and you’ll overshoot, which can send you ass-over-teakettle down the far side. I’ve seen it done, and frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it. Sand’s soft, but not that soft.

To make matters worse, the flow of the trail is constantly changing. Each trip up the dune is a hard reboot—a new surface potentially hiding new challenges. Driftwood? Small boulders? A cluster of millennia-old seashells? You never know what might get churned up—or worse, when somebody might get stuck and make a mess digging themselves free. And when inertia alone isn’t enough to get the job done, that’s when you call in reinforcements—in the form of torque, naturally.

There are two levers to pull in order to increase your available torque: engine output and mechanical multiplication. The first is exactly what it sounds like: By stepping on the throttle, you feed the engine more air and more fuel, which it then converts into torque. The second is a five-dollar way of saying it all comes down to what gear (and range) you’re in.

Enthusiasts get all fizzy over two-speed 4×4 transfer cases for exactly this reason. By shifting into low-range, you multiply the torque going to the wheels at a given speed. This shortens all of your gears, meaning your engine spins at a much higher RPM than normal to achieve the same forward velocity. Translation? Lots more noise producing and a lot less forward progress. Sounds bad, right? Usually, it would be, but out here, it means you can produce WAAAAAH! levels of torque without WAAAAAH! levels of forward progress.

Normally, deep sand is exactly where you’d want a low-range gearbox and locking rear differential, which is why Nissan only bothered to bring Pro-4X models along for our outing. But with all the rain, the top layers of the dunes were packed solid, inviting tires to grab with very little drama. Four-wheel drive was still mandatory, but low-range proved unnecessary. Manually selecting second gear to keep the trucks from up-shifting into the torqueless abyss of fuel-efficient ratios proved more than enough to keep the engines operating within the meat of their respective power bands, and the tires were aired down to aid in keeping the trucks afloat on the crushed white quartz that emerges from eastern Lake Michigan.

My first stop on my solo expedition was the same one visited by countless others over the decades of 4×4’ing at Silver Lake: Test Hill. Its name says it all, really. If you can get up Test Hill, you can go anywhere in the park. It’s a climb of less than 200 feet, and if you do it right, you should complete it in seconds. Get it wrong, and you’ll gain new appreciation for just how high that really is.

My first go was in the Frontier, which lacks the Armada’s turbocharged torque (516 pound-feet!). Still, 281 lb-ft is nothing to sneeze at, and like the SUV, the pickup allows for manual gear selection. I hadn’t driven this truck at all until today, and my familiarization with the powertrain came from the two-minute crawl from our beachside staging area to the base of Test Hill. A few hundred yards away, I could see one of our recovery trucks parked where its occupants could quickly deploy to the stickier spots should anybody need assistance. I decided then and there not to be that guy.

With that in mind, I gave the Frontier about 60% throttle and dedicated my attention to keeping it pointed straight ahead. It not only lacks the Armada’s grunt, but also its heft, especially over the rear axle. It bucked and wiggled its rear end under throttle, alternately biting and then bouncing free as the sand gave way beneath the tires, but with a little finesse and some patience, it found the ruts and settled—just in time for the top of the dune to disappear beneath the Frontier’s hood, followed by the brief sensation of vertigo as the front wheels gently tipped over the crest.

Not today, tow strap!

Committing to Test Hill means committing to several more massive crystalline undulations. This section of the park is one-way due to dangers that would be posed by blind, two-way traffic over the sky-scraping crests. Each successive dune is easier to clear than the one before it, but all are unique. One nearly bends over itself at the top—that’s one you really don’t want to take too hot. Counting the seconds until your wheels touch back down sounds awesome in the abstract, but it’s a bit dicier when your clenched cheeks are about to absorb the brunt impact.

After I concluded my tour in the Frontier, I made my way back to the staging area to find somebody looking to trade their Armada for the pickup. Before long, I was back at Test Hill in the big SUV, waiting on a small buggy of some sort to free itself from its high-centered perch atop the dune. I glanced toward where our recovery crew had been staged earlier and found them missing—probably checking in on another driver, as I’d heard nothing at all over the radio. So I sat while the recovery played out. Once the way was clear again, I saddled back up and charged at the dune in the big Armada—only to bog down completely just short of the crest.

No sweat, though—the trick is not to panic. Off-roading is a hobby defined by one of our best-known societal maxims: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. In this case, that means backing down the dune to the starting point and starting from scratch. It’s simple enough, but you have to be careful about keeping the thing pointed straight downhill. If you get too much steering angle, it’s easy to lay the truck on its side—or even roll down the hill completely. Yep, seen that too.

But 30 seconds later, I was back at the proper launch point, shiny-side-up and ready for another try. I glanced again to find that the recovery crew had returned to its perch with their truck facing Test Hill—like a turkey vulture curiously eyeing what might be a sick bull.

No chance, you ugly, bald f-

I sent some gnarly rooster tails up on the second go, and the way the Armada bit in, I knew I was golden. As I approached the crest, I saw the huge concave area that the buggy had scrubbed out. Just as it disappeared beneath the hood, I goosed the throttle for a fraction of a second to bring the nose up, hoping it would keep the front bumper from coming down on the crest and killing my momentum. It worked. By the time the nose rebounded toward the ground, the front axle was already dropping away beneath me, and with just a mild dab of brake to keep the rear end honest, I was once again gently descending in the right direction. High on the clean finish, I made my way through the park and back around for another go, which ended up being unremarkably trivial.

This is the second time I’ve visited the dunes. My first was at the wheel of a Ford F-150 Raptor R alongside The Drive‘s indefatigable Joel Feder. While that’s a very different automobile from the two Nissans I drove this time around, the experience proved comfortingly familiar for one simple reason: Modern 4x4s are just stupidly capable.

Decades ago, a discussion of must-have factory off-road equipment usually began and ended with steel bumpers, upgraded axles, and two-speed transfer cases. Today, we’re constantly being bombarded by new tech that further trivializes what used to be car-thrashing obstacles. In today’s increasingly massive 4x4s, items like surround-view camera systems and hill descent control can actually enable trickier maneuvers than any commercially available lift kit.

As depressing as that reality may be for some, the simple fact is that the automotive industry has left the short-wheelbase, two-door 4×4 formula behind in favor of modern engineering solutions that allow OEMs to fit massive wheel and tire combinations to mid- and even full-size trucks and SUVs. Even AEV, which prides itself on offering capability without real-world compromises, is finding ways to stick 40-inch tires on anything with four wheels—and the resulting vehicles are genuinely more capable for it.

Can the same be said for Nissan’s Pro-4X lineup? In the case of the Armada, I say yes. Its air suspension keeps it from turning into a tippy mess on pavement and offsets the NVH impacts of its burlier tires. That’s a trade-off I’d accept in a heartbeat. The Frontier’s value proposition is a bit trickier since it doesn’t offer anything to offset the downgrade in creature comforts. For the pickup buyer, however, that may not matter much. It certainly wouldn’t around here.

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Nissan on Tuesday announced the return of its rugged Rock Creek grade to the Nissan Pathfinder three-row SUV. Redesigned for 2022, the SUV embraces more off-road capability and a more outdoorsy look with the 2023 Pathfinder Rock Creek trim.

With its shift last year from a CVT to a 9-speed automatic transmission, the Pathfinder boasted better towing capacity at 6,000 lb and more off-road capability through an available all-wheel-drive system that routes half of the torque to the rear axle, with a limited slip differential allocating power to the rear wheel with the most grip.

That system comes standard on Rock Creek models, and Nissan also revised the fuel mapping of the Rock Creek’s 3.5-liter V-6 to boost output to 295 hp and 270 lb-ft of torque (from 284 hp and 259 lb-ft). But the boost requires premium fuel.  

First launched on the 2020 Pathfinder, the Rock Creek model adds an off-road suspension with a 5/8-inch lift that raises the ground clearance to about 7.7 inches. The 18-inch wheels pretend to be beadlock-capable, but the all-terrain tires are real, and a roof rack that’s totally tubular can hold 220 lb. The exterior gets black trim elements, and the interior flashes black synthetic leather upholstery with orange contrast stitching. A surround-view camera system comes standard, as does a tow hitch and wiring harness, second-row captain’s chairs, and LED fog lights. 

Nissan is not alone in adding off-road grades to popular models, but Nissan has gone a bit further in adding actual off-road hardware over competitors such as the Honda Passport TrailSport or Kia Sportage and Telluride X-Pro. Subaru offers a Wilderness grade on the Forester and Outback, Jeep has Trailhawk models, and Ford has a Timberline range. 

The Rock Creek package added only $995 to the 2020 Pathfinder SV model. Expect the price to increase; it will be announced near the late summer on-sale date.