The Honda Ridgeline's uniqueness starts with its appearance. With pickups, you need a cab and a cargo box, so form to a considerable extent follows function. Yet Ridgeline doesn't look quite like any pickup before it, whether it's from America or Japan. The grille, the front end, the cab shape, the buttresses coming down off the rear of the roof to join the integrated pickup bed, all seem to have been deliberately designed to be different, and different can be good or bad. Styling is not our favorite Ridgeline attribute.

Ridgeline's front end reminds most people of the Honda Element SUV, only more massive. The standard grille looks like an old television antenna, but a cleaner-looking antenna comes on the RTX model and is available as an accessory from Honda dealers.

Ridgeline's profile shows a lot of metal sculpting from end to end that conventional pickup trucks with separate beds don't have.

Ridgeline's cargo bed is made of steel-reinforced SMC plastic, not steel with a sprayed-on or slipped-in liner. The bed is five feet long with the tailgate up, and six and a half feet long with the tailgate down, enabling it to carry two dirt bikes or a large ATV. A tubular aluminum cargo bed extender is available for longer loads. There are four large retaining chocks, one in each corner of the bed, to help secure large pieces of cargo.

The two-way tailgate is unusual, but it works great. It will drop down in familiar fashion, top to bottom, and it also opens like a door, from right to left. There's a hidden latch on the lower right side and hinges on the left, so users don't have to lean across the tailgate to store or retrieve items in the bed or the storage trunk. The tailgate is retained by a conventional cable on the left and a patented, hidden retainer on the right.

The storage trunk, even more than the tailgate, distinguishes Ridgeline for other pickups. This covered, sealed and lockable storage bin beneath the bed works the like the trunk in a sedan. It offers 8.5 cubic feet of secure storage, which according to Honda is enough space for a 72-quart cooler or three sets of golf clubs. The compact spare tire mounts forward of the storage trunk a sliding, locking tray. The trunk is even fitted with a drain plug for those times when ice turns to water, or when accumulated crud needs to be hosed out.