2016 Honda CR-V review – Roadshow

The Good The 2016 Honda CR-V delivers and engaged driving feel, with good power and steering response. The small SUV form factor serves a variety of uses, from commuting and shopping to weekend recreation.

The Bad The available navigation system makes address entry tedious due to slow responses and piece-by-piece inputs. The collision warning creates false alerts and doesn’t sync up with adaptive cruise control. Ride quality suffers from a tightly-tuned suspension.

The Bottom Line The 2016 Honda CR-V sacrifices comfort for an engaged driving experience, not necessarily the right trade-off in a small SUV, while features such as navigation work poorly or in an unnecessarily quirky fashion.

Driving over mildly rough pavement, the 2016 Honda CR-V’s ride felt like the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. It subjected me to every nuance of the road when, in a small SUV like this, I would prefer some serious cushioning.

Heading down the freeway, I tried unsuccessfully to turn on the adaptive cruise control. It wasn’t until I pulled over on a surface street and could safely poke around that I figured out the button on the steering wheel labeled “Main” enabled cruise control.

The CR-V wasn’t making a good first impression.

I would like to say that the Honda CR-V finally won me over through sheer precociousness, but there was no Hollywood ending here. While I eventually gave the CR-V respect for its on-road handling, I wouldn’t buy a small SUV for fast cornering. That’s why the gods made sports cars.

Honda gave its CR-V small SUV an update for the 2015 model year, unfortunately too early for its latest navigation head unit, which supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

Wayne Cunningham/Roadshow

As a small SUV, the CR-V has always been a practical alternative to a midsize sedan for families, offering seating for five and a good amount of cargo space, coupled with decent fuel economy. The upright seating position and ride height make for a nice view of the road, putting drivers on par with the rash of full-size SUVs hogging the lanes. Honda gave the CR-V a few upgrades for the previous model year, including a powerful yet economical engine.

However, unlike Honda’s most recently upgraded models, such as the Civic, the CR-V suffers from an older dashboard infotainment system that doesn’t include Android Auto or Apple CarPlay.

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A litany of quirks

I mentioned the “Main” button above, which most automakers would simply label “Cruise.” Pushing that button, then setting my speed, the CR-V used its radar sensor to automatically match speed with slower traffic ahead, a reasonable adaptive cruise-control system. But the CR-V also has collision warning, and these two systems don’t talk to each other.

For example, the cruise control sensed slow traffic ahead, so it began braking from 65 mph down to about 30 mph. At the same time, the collision-warning system sounded an alert and flashed me a “Brake” warning. Um, the cruise control had me covered here, although maybe the collision system was prepping me for the fact that the cruise control cuts out under 20 mph.

The collision system also proved error-prone, flashing its warning and even hitting the brakes as I approached one of San Francisco’s steep hills.

Figuring out how to turn on lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise control will be a challenge if you don’t…RTFM.

Wayne Cunningham/Roadshow

Rather than a typical blind-spot monitor system, with a warning light to right or left when there are cars to the corresponding side, Honda insists on using its LaneWatch system, showing a right-side camera view on the center display when I hit the right turn signal. The left side merely uses a larger side mirror.

And don’t expect a volume dial for the stereo — I had to contend with plus and minus buttons on the head unit bezel and steering wheel.

As another quirk, putting down the rear seat backs to maximize the rear cargo area first requires lifting the seat bottoms. That may lead to a flatter load floor, but the overall cargo space of 70.9 cubic feet is only average in the segment. And most owners will likely prefer the simplicity of just pushing the seat backs down, as in the Ford Escape and Toyota RAV4.