Baja BonanzaWith less than 90 miles on the odometer and only 15 miles worth of testing, the Honda Ridgeline lined up in class 7S (stock mini trucks) for the Baja 1000, a 709-mile, 30-hour race from Ensenada down to San Felipe, then back through the heart of Mexico, arguably the most demanding off-road race in the world. Honda teamed up with Clive Skilton's California Race and Rally to enter the newly released Ridgeline.
The truck left Ensenada on a Friday afternoon howling down a groomed riverbed surrounded by thousands of spectators and sounding awesome thanks to race headers from Prototype Racing and an aggressive automatic transmission reprogrammed by Ridgeline engineers. Skilton, a man who has won in Top Fuel dragsters, IMSA sports cars and various Baja machinery before, drove the first stint with co-driver Jason Riviera.
On the first hill out of town, Skilton encountered a number of trucks stuck on the dusty route. Halfway up, he saw a competitor rolling back down the hill straight at him. Skilton stopped the Ridgeline and was forced to back down the hill.
A second attempt failed, so Riviera jumped out to reduce weight. The Ridgeline sailed up the sandy mountain, and then waited for Riviera as he climbed his way up the hill.
Later the Ridgeline dropped into a hole, a booby trap, bending the driveshaft. The truck lost drive in the rear wheels, which didn't impede progress as badly as the five-inch gash in one of the tire's sidewalls did.
In the pits, we replaced two stripped wheel studs and the driveshaft, refueled, and went back into the night. We measured fuel consumption at six miles a gallon, fairly typical for this kind of driving.
Later that night, the team encountered the feared silt beds. As fine as talcum powder, the silt beds can range from 1 to 3 feet deep, and there were five miles of them to cross. Hitting a bed throws a curtain of silt over your hood and into your cabin, nearly erasing visibility (None of the Baja vehicles have windshields)
Second-shift driver Jason Lafortune encountered the silt beds in the dark and saw a number of trucks bogged. Rule 1: Do not stop or you'll be digging yourself out for the next hour.
Lafortune drove full throttle at 6,000 rpm in second gear, weaving around lodged Fords and Hummers, driving blind through eight foot-tall bushes to avoid impact with them. When the dust cleared, he'd overtaken about 25 vehicles. The Hummer team found our radio frequency and said, "Two questions: How in the hell did you do that? And how far to get to clear ground?"
"Well, it's a Honda," Lafortune said. "And you've got about another four miles to go."
Lafortune would later attribute the Ridgeline's silt bed success to its low weight (relative to the 6,000-8,000 lb. competitors) flat underside, torque, tires and transmission improvements.
"The engine and top-end power delivery is better than any other vehicle I've driven in the Baja," he said. "We had the Ridgeline easily climbing over 2 and 3-foot rocks, just engaging low gear and the VTM lock."
Skilton took over again at midnight and the team's Achilles heel became clear. The tires were excellent for crossing silt beds and the high-speed sections, but the sidewalls couldn't resist the constant battering from the bigger rocks in the infamous Matomi Wash. Punctures occurred about every 50 miles and by early Saturday morning, the team missed a timed checkpoint before it closed, resulting in a retirement after covering about half of the rally.
Mechanically, the truck held up, no failure of CV or ball joints, or suspension components. Skilton said the Ridge had the best 4-wheel-drive system he'd ever used. "With a better tire choice and a little more ground clearance and wheel travel, the Ridgeline would be tough to beat."