Will be interested to see if they maintain those qualities as the mileage goes up.
We haven’t talked much about Honda Ridgelines lately. For some haters, that’s a blessing. For the rest, though, you might be wondering if our love has faded.
It has not.
After selling our 2006 Ridgeline after 11 years and 235,000 miles, we convinced Honda to loan us an all-new 2016 Ridgeline for a year.
That loan started in September of 2016 and, fortunately, turned into almost two years. We liked it so much, however, that in the spring of 2018 we bought a brand-new 2018 Honda Ridgeline RTL-E. This one also wore Platinum White Pearl and featured the same options as our loaner.
After two years and 43,000 miles, our beloved Ridgeline continues to truck on with nary a complaint. However, while the original Firestones aren’t quite at the wear bars, they’re close enough.
So we turned to an expert: Tire Rack’s Woody Rogers. He runs the company’s testing department and knows all. And he’s nice.
His first question: What are your goals?
The short version of our reply: quiet highway manners.
The longer version: We’d like to still be able to plow through torrential rain while cranking up the dry handling a bit. We drive the Ridgeline like a sports car, we admit, and use it to pre-run our Classic Motorsports road tours—meaning lots of turns, mountains and spirited driving. We aren’t complete pigs, however, so we’re less concerned about off-road capabilities. Tire life isn’t as crucial as that dry handling. And, finally, we want to go with a tire company that supports GRM, meaning BFGoodrich, Falken, Maxxis, Michelin, Nankang, Pirelli, Toyo or Yokohama.
We fully understood that one tire wouldn’t do it all. If you want the best in off-road, for example, you might sacrifice highway manners.
Woody came back with a few recommendations, including something brand new: the Yokohama Geolandar CV G058. This model, which just went on sale April 1, replaces the Geolandar G055, a tire with fair to good customer reviews on the Tire Rack website.
However, we had just put Yokohama UHP tires on two cars in our fleet—the Boxster and the 911—and came away happy in both cases: great handling, low noise, comfortable ride quality.
While these summer sports car tires are not appropriate or available for our Ridgeline, we certainly have had good feelings toward Yokohama as the brand seems on its game. The listed prices seemed very fair, so we ordered a set.
Woody had just one caution: Those OE Firestones would be tough to beat in the noise department since they were primarily designed to be quiet. “The noise-related interaction between tire and chassis is quite complex,” he explains, “and every OEM tire is tuned to optimize that in concert with the other parameters spec’d by the vehicle engineers, in a way no non-OEM tire could be.”
We had the new tires mounted at our local Tire Kingdom, one of Tire Rack’s local recommended installers. The crew was quick, efficient and didn’t report any issues.
We retrieved the truck and started driving home. Along the way, we noticed something: These Yokohamas are really quiet.
Then we put the tires through their paces—action that would be typical for this kind of truck. Steady-state braking, turn-in and corner exit all felt much improved.
Yes, true, we’re talking new tires versus old ones, but after two trucks and four years on those Firestones, we got a good feel for them. And we can’t recall a Ridgeline feeling this good in the dry. And then add in the quality ride and nearly silent voice. We’d testify to all of that in court, by the way.
Winter performance? We can’t say as we live in Florida and it’s springtime. But Yokohama’s release on the new tire mentions snow performance: “Hundreds of 2D/3D combination sipes create powerful biting edges giving drivers the grip needed to handle slick winter roads.”
Moving away from the OE tire sometimes doesn’t go as planned and can cause things to feel a little off. We’ve had that happen ourselves. This time, though, we’re happy with the Geolandar CV G058.
This model is aimed at crossovers, smaller SUVs and minivans, and will be available in 33 sizes: 16- to 20-inch rim diameters. The tire carries a 65,000-mile warranty. Our 245/60R18 size retails for about $170 each at Tire Rack. The OE Firestone, the Destination LE2, retails for about $185 in the same size.
Final thoughts: Even though we replaced the OE tire with a less expensive option, we believe that we enhanced our Ridgeline’s driving characteristics. After we cover more miles and experience some inclement weather, we’ll report back.
Will be interested to see if they maintain those qualities as the mileage goes up.
Ridgelines are sweet.
I've put about 500 miles on these tires and it is interesting how everytime I try different roads that I am used to, these tires keep reminding me how much better the Ridgeline handles with them on it.
I'll look at these for our Mazda 5. I agree about Yokohama seeming to be on their game.
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