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Honda shows new minivan concept in Chicago

Honda debuts its Odyssey concept at the Chicago Auto Show.

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
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Honda Odyssey concept
The Odyssey concept presages the 2011 production version coming out in the fall. Honda

Not prone to building outlandish or highly speculative concepts, Honda showed off a very mundane concept version of its upcoming new Odyssey minivan at the Chicago Auto Show. The real thing is coming out this fall, so the concept is fairly close to production trim.

Honda notes that the new Odyssey will be lower and wider than the current version, improving aerodynamics and fuel economy. Some versions of the car will get 19 mpg city and 28 mpg highway, according to Honda. But it sounds like the powerplant options will remain unchanged, as Honda says the current i-VTEC V-6, with cylinder deactivation technology, will still be available.

The dashboard sketch looks similar to the current Odyssey. Honda

The concept uses LED signal lighting front and rear, but the headlights are conventional high-intensity discharge lamps. This lighting configuration won't be very different in the production model, although it might lose some of the LEDs.

Honda only released some sketches of the interior, but what we can tell from the dashboard is that the minivan sports no significant interface upgrades. The concept Odyssey gets the same large knob controller that has been migrating from Acuras to Hondas over the last couple of years, and will likely get a navigation system with traffic reporting and weather.