The Honda Odyssey Is The Fastest Car No One Will Ever Guess Is Fast

As enthusiasts, we sometimes trick ourselves into thinking that our cars either look faster than they are or, somehow, slip by as somehow stealthy. In reality, everyone knows a Tesla is fast these days. Your de-badged SRT8 Charger isn’t fooling anyone. Matt Hardigree is only human, don’t think I haven’t been through the same predicament. But if you want to be fast and truly want to sneak around town, your best bet is a new Honda Odyssey minivan.

I’m serious! Every year I drive a minivan from New York to Michigan as a road trip, with family, is always the best way to understand the state of the latest and greatest in rugrat transportation. A minivan is designed to get abused on a daily basis and yet still provide extreme comfort, which is basically half of the job of being a parent.

This is my third year running this test and the Odyssey isn’t the most luxurious van I’ve driven, nor is it the most fuel-efficient. It’s not even the cheapest. It is, however, the fastest and best handling. If you’re going to drive a minivan you’ve got a lot of choices and all of them do the basic job of moving kids from place to place. Why not get the one that’s fun to drive?

Will you use the relative sportiness of your minivan often? Probably not. Kids are an incredible amount of fun, but that fun is usually on their terms and you may get a kid that vomits when the road gets twisty. Then again, perhaps you’ll find a moment, on a back road, and then you’ll get to live your old life just for a fleeting moment.

Why Does This Car Exist?

Honda is unique among the biggest automakers in that it’s quite restrained with its product line in North America. It only has one truck in the form of the peculiar Ridgeline, which is a platform-mate with the Odyssey (and the Pilot and Passport). It has none of the big, truck-based SUVs that Toyota and Nissan have.

If it plays in a space, Honda expects to be competitive. That doesn’t mean Honda is overly conservative. It still gives us exciting performance cars like the Honda Civic Type R, oddballs like the hybrid Acura NSX, and even mainstream attempts at brilliance like the lovable Honda Element. It just means that Honda seems to do things slowly, and carefully, only entering a market if it thinks it can be competitive.

When it entered the minivan market in 1994, the Accord-based Honda Odyssey was most notable for its lack of sliding doors. It was more like an MPV than a true minivan. By the time the second-generation van rolled around it was bigger, V6-powered, and got the sliding doors it needed. Since that time, the Odyssey has been one of the more competitive vans on the market.

The current generation has been around since 2018 without many changes, so 2025 brought a visual upgrade in the form of an aesthetic that feels a lot more like the Acura NSX than, say, the new Honda Accord. This isn’t a coincidence. The new rear bumper, for instance, takes the vertical reflectors from the NSX. This, along with the new front fascia and larger foglights, is designed to give a more “premium, aspirational” look according to Honda.

I don’t know that many people aspire to be minivan owners. It just sort of happens.

Does It Do Minivan Things Well?

The default seating arrangement for American families is a seven-seat vehicle. That’s two parents, maybe three kids, and a couple of friends. Or it’s a family with one kid and a family with two kids. This doesn’t make sense to me. I keep running into situations with other families where we need eight seats.

A minivan, then, can be the perfect option here. Most minivans come either in a seven-passenger version with captain’s chairs or an eight-seat version. My family much prefers the seven-seat version because my daughter loves a captain’s chair, harboring the child’s belief that she’s the one in charge (a belief contradicted by her experience… usually). I want eight seats. Hell, I want nine seats. I don’t want a center console so much as I want a way to cram one more person in with me. I’m social like that.

The Honda Odyssey Elite I had featured seating for eight, with two up front, three in the middle, and three in the back. The car uses the same gauge cluster as my CR-V and therefore I was amused every time I saw how many seatbelts I could get plugged in at the same time.

So close…

Every year when we go for Christmas church service with my in-laws we either have to hope someone is sick or we have to take two cars. Not this year! All three kids, all four parents, and one grandma got to come along for the ride in comfort.

I’ve been barred from sawzalling the pillars off cars, so here’s a photo from Honda that shows you what the interior looks like if you remove the entire side:

I asked my family what they thought about being cramped back there and my sister-in-law was impressed with the comfort and everyone, even my mother-in-law, said they’d be fine being carted around like this for a few hours. The kids in the back were far enough away that I could barely hear them even if they did have complaints.

It’s here I should probably mention all the fun little tricks Honda does to make this an ideal situation for parents. First up is what Honda calls its “Magic Slide” second-row. This means you can remove that middle seat in the second row and either shove the two seats on the outside together or, if your kids are beaking too much for no reason, you can slide them apart. Here’s what that looks like:

The van is full of small, interesting features like this that you’ll definitely get the most out of if you’re road-tripping something like this.

One of my favorites is this two-stage sunglas holder that creates a mirror that looks back at your inhabitants. There’s also a camera mode, similar to what you find in other vans, but looking at the screen while driving isn’t something I like to do for too long. This is simpler and works better in my experience.

There’s a fold-down screen. I’m usually mixed on these because most kids have their own devices. Still, I don’t love the idea of my daughter on her iPad for the entire 14-hour drive. For some reason, it’s better that she watches Home Alone on a screen slightly further away and dangling from the ceiling.

All of this was made possible by an Amazon Fire Stick connected to the HDMI port in the center console that was hotspotting off of the car’s WiFi and then blasting audio via a pair of headphones that came with the car. You could probably also do this off of your phone if you don’t want to pay extra for your car to have WiFi.

This system worked for about 97% of the trip, with only a few short interruptions due to a loss of signal. My kiddo watched both Home Alone movies and more seasons of The Simpsons than I want to think about. We did make stops along the way and pointed out interesting places to her. We took some time to enjoy Cuyahoga Valley National Park and she earned another Jr. Ranger badge, so it wasn’t a trip completely devoid of education.

Admittedly, though, both my wife and I were a little burned out by the end of the semester and it was nice to be able to unwind and talk without a lot of interruptions. In theory, I could have used the “Cabin Talk” feature to chat with my kid via her headphones, but we discouraged her from listening too loudly to audio so it wasn’t necessary.

If there’s one downside to this particular setup it’s that my daughter kept losing the remote for the Firestick every time we stopped to do anything. It was never long and, yet, it was always annoying. My buddy has a previous-generation Odyssey and he loves it. It also has this:

A remote holder! Genius!

If there’s one minivan feature that rises above all others it’s the completely flat-folding floor, which Chrysler is still the king of right now. No one can top Stow-n-Go. Stellantis doesn’t do a lot of great things now, so you have to give them credit for having the absolute best seat-folding system in the business. Honda’s seats fold easily and create a flat floor in the back, but you can’t make all the seats disappear, which is always a disappointment.

This Thing Kinda Hauls

What it lacks in chair-stowage, the Honda Odyssey more than makes up for in low-key Q-ship performance. I think we’ve all gotten used to the idea that some SUVs are quick and powerful, even if few of them can shimmy on backroads without an expensive dose of magnetorheological dampers or other electromechanical trickery. The Odyssey doesn’t have any of that. It’s just an honest setup with MacPherson front struts up front and a multi-link rear suspension with trailing arms for the unpowered rear wheels.

That’s right. There are no powered rear wheels. While you can get various levels of “nice” in the Honda Odyssey depending on trim level, there’s only drivetrain configuration. You get Honda’s tried-and-true 3.5-liter V6, this time with VTEC and producing 280 horsepower/260 lb-ft of torque. I’m old enough to remember when that was a lot of power. The Sienna makes do with 245 horses while the Carnival Hybrid shuffles along with just 242 horsepower, though more torque. Technically, the Chrysler should be the hot rod here with 287 horsepower.

Ultimately, though, the 0-60 mph time is as low as 6.4 seconds when Car and Driver does the testing, making it faster than any minivan sold in the United States that isn’t a pure EV, including every varietal of Chrysler. It’s also faster than my Honda CR-V and, on a good day, Thomas’s Porsche Boxster. Torque steer is minimal, though you can chirp the tires a bit on a damp road if your goal is to please your kids or upset your in-laws.

I usually charge up a few on-ramps when I have a minivan just to test the vehicle’s acceleration in its most likely environment, and my family almost never even notices. They noticed with the Odyssey. When the VTEC kicks in it makes a not-terrible sound and pulls pretty damn good for a vehicle that can haul six kids and all their necessary snacks. The Odyssey also features a 10-speed automatic with a push-button interface and flappy paddles. The gearing for this is definitely more oriented for spryness than you get in any other traditional minivan.

Because it shares much of the switchgear with my Honda CR-V it was easiest to compare the two, and the Odyssey handles better in almost every way. Being FWD, it pulls itself straight across hundreds of miles of interstate (aided by Honda’s lane-keeping software). It doesn’t exactly dance around turns, but the lower center of gravity and rear stabilizer bar help keep the big van surprisingly well-planted. The electronically-boosted rack-and-pinion steering is a touch light, but more communicative than either my CR-V or any other minivan I’ve ever driven (excluding, of course, the short-lived Mazda5).

This doesn’t make it fast, per se. It’s not secretly a sports car. Don’t take it to your local SCCA Autocross expecting to take home any trophies. It’s a between-the-lines kind of fast. A maybe-the-kids-are-asleep-and-won’t-notice-me-apexing-this-turn kind of fast. A no-one-is-around-and-I-need-to-hear-noise kind of fast.

[Writer’s note: I feel compelled to point out that the Honda Odyssey is currently the only minivan sold in America with a factory racing team. We wrote about it, it rules. –TH]

The Sharon, Lois & Bram In The Room

Having only one drivetrain means that the Odyssey is now the only minivan on the market that lacks a hybrid option. With the Sienna, a hybrid powertrain is the only option. With the Pacifica, you’ve got to get the plug-in version. And with the Carnival, it’s an option. Because the Odyssey is older, Honda hasn’t yet decided to give it a hybrid option. Given the volumes it does, the CR-V, Accord, and Civic were first on the list to get the company’s hybrid system.

In theory, as Thomas pointed out, the Sienna is the no-brainer here as it’s hybrid only and starts under $40,000. In reality, it’s hard to get a Sienna at anywhere near MSRP so most other options are going to be cheaper.

I missed the hybrid, though. I drove almost 1,700 miles of around-town and highway driving and got an admirable 26.7 MPG. The Sienna gets 36 MPG city/highway/combined. That difference adds up quite quickly. The Carnival Hybrid gets 33 MPG combined, which is also significant if you drive these things long enough.

The Odyssey I borrowed was the Elite trim, and so it starts around $52,000 for all the goodies, including the 10-inch center screen, rear-seat screen, wireless phone charger, and hands-free liftgate. You’ll have to consult your family about whether or not all that’s worth it. As with most Honda products, the lowest trims end up being surprisingly nice and well-featured.

Would I Buy This One?

I assume a hybrid Odyssey will come along at some point, but it might not be this generation. It’s a shame, too, because it makes recommending the otherwise pleasant Honda van to people a little harder. I liked the Pacifica PHEV, but only as a rental or a lease, and would be wary for a long-termer. Give me the Honday any day. The Kia Carnival is the most attractive and most comfortable of all the minivans, and in base trim the hybrid is still a couple of grand cheaper than the cheapest Odyssey, which starts in the $42,000 range. It would be mighty tempting.

We’ll have a Sienna review from Thomas soon and I’d like to do the same test with the new version of that van, though I’ve also driven a rental version of the hybrid and thought it was quite capable, if not a touch overstyled and numb. Hopefully, the new version has improved.

Being a parent is expensive and the best deal might be the best deal. You can’t go wrong with a Sienna, a Carnival, or an Odyssey, so if you cross-shop and get a nice price on one the other that’s maybe your answer. If reliability is your key metric, then a Honda or the Toyota are safe bets. If you’re struggling with the idea of owning a minivan, the Carnival is the least-minivan-y.

If you’re less interested in a hybrid and fancy yourself a Max Verstappen, albeit one with a full brood, then the Odyssey is really the only choice.