Honda Ridgeline pickup to make a comeback at Super Bowl

Said Jeff Conrad, SVP and general manager of the Honda Motor’s eponymous division, “Super Bowl 50 is the right time and the right venue to communicate Honda’s continued leadership in light trucks”.

Honda plans to make it a one-two punch with a 60-second commercial spot during the third quarter of the Super Bowl 50 on February 7th, 2016. “Ridgeline will deliver everything you’d expect in a Honda from incredible packaging and fuel-efficiency to top safety technologies and innovative, segment-first features”.

Honda’s light truck sales over the first 11 months this year increased 12% on yearly basis to 599,507 units.

The commercial will come just one month after the next-gen 2017 Honda Ridgeline has its world premiere at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Honda also redid its crossover lineup last year, revamping the CR-V, and introducing the HR-V crossover this year.

Honda also previewed the new pickup with the Ridgeline Baja Race Truck (shown above) in November. This latest model comes more than 10 years after the Ridgeline “concept” debuted at the NAIAS in 2005. Honda (like Nissan, with its all-new Titan XD truck) is promoting its newly redesigned pickup truck as engineered in OH and California, produced in Alabama, and sold all over the country; that’s not a bad strategy as the heat has been turned up in the midsize segment with the debut and success of the Chevy Colorado and the redesigned Toyota Tacoma. Although Honda’s offering is not technically in the same league as a traditional body-on-frame truck, as Ridgeline is a unibody vehicle, like a crossover, it will still play in that sandbox.

Honda offers a full line of reliable, fuel-efficient and fun-to-drive automobiles for American auto buyers through approximately 1,000 independent U.S. Honda dealers. Despite growing sales from 2012 to 2013, the company retired the current generation two years ahead of its successor’s arrival.