With people lining up at Honda dealers to wait for their turn to pay extra for a minivan, it didn’t take the competition long to realize that the Japanese automaker had done something right with the second-generation Odyssey. Mazda’s smaller MPV came closest to matching Honda thanks to several innovative features, at least until Nissan and Toyota arrived with brand-new editions of the Quest and Sienna. But it wasn’t until the 2004 Toyota Sienna went on sale that the Honda Odyssey’s luster truly began to fade. Not to worry. In traditional Honda fashion, no grass is growing beneath the Odyssey’s tires. For 2005, the Honda Odyssey is completely redesigned, and though the result is not as groundbreaking as the 1999 model, it is nonetheless poised to regain its position as the best minivan on the market today. Honda offered us an opportunity to learn more about the 2005 Honda Odyssey in Birmingham, Ala., near the assembly plant that will build up to 160,000 minivans annually. Because most minivan occupants ride rather than drive, that’s how we spent the majority of our time with the new Odyssey. But whether we occupied the driver’s seat, the second-row bucket seat, or the third-row bench, we came away quite impressed with the redesigned Honda Odyssey.
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