Honda is sending the 2027 Passport TrailSport to one of the harder proving grounds available without a test budget: the 2026 Rebelle Rally, a 1,500-plus-mile all-women off-road navigation event that bans GPS, cell phones, and any substitute for a paper map and a compass. The vehicle competes stock. No lift kit, no skid-plate upgrades, no prepped suspension. Whatever the factory shipped is what crosses the Nevada and California desert.
That choice is deliberate. Honda has entered the Rebelle eight times, using the event to stress off-road components in terrain the engineering team can’t easily replicate in Ohio. For 2027, the Passport TrailSport arrived at dealers with a comprehensively reengineered suspension: 28 components redesigned, reengineered, or entirely new, including springs, dampers, control arms, stabilizer bars, knuckles, front and rear driveshafts, and the front subframe. Ground clearance grew 1.38 inches to 9.65 inches over the 2026 model. Approach, departure, and breakover angles all improved. Honda calls it the most off-road-capable SUV the company has built.
The drivetrain is unchanged from what the TrailSport has always run: a 3.5-liter V6, a 10-speed automatic, and Honda’s torque-vectoring i-VTM4 all-wheel drive. No modifications touch any of it for competition. The team competes in the X-Cross Bone Stock class, meaning the Passport TrailSport that finishes (or doesn’t) in Imperial Sand Dunes, California on October 17 is the same vehicle a buyer can order today.
Behind the wheel are Abby Connolly and Amy Hein, both Honda associates based at the Honda Automotive Development Center in Raymond, Ohio. Connolly is a senior design engineer in the powersports performance group with Pikes Peak Hill Climb experience through HART going back to 2021. Hein is a senior test engineer in the battery electric group. Neither has run the Rebelle before. They compete as team #208, the Good TrailSports, with live tracking and scoring available online.
The event itself is structured around navigation accuracy rather than outright speed. Teams locate hidden checkpoints using only maps and compasses, accumulating points across seven scored days of competition. This year’s route starts outside Las Vegas and covers every terrain type the Nevada-to-California corridor offers, with 10 to 12 hours of driving per day.
The 2027 Passport TrailSport’s timing at Rebelle is more pointed than it might first appear. The fourth-generation Passport launched in early 2025 to strong demand, with 55,231 units sold that year, about 70 percent more than 2024. Honda noted that 80 percent of buyers chose the TrailSport trim over the base model, a split the company acknowledged was higher than anticipated. An event that specifically tests what the TrailSport trim does differently from the standard Passport is a more useful marketing instrument than a sponsored trail ride, and the Rebelle’s bone-stock class requirement removes the obvious objection that the competition vehicle has nothing in common with what sits in a showroom.
Honda engineers will have 1,500 miles of desert data to work with when the rally wraps on October 17. The Passport TrailSport, meanwhile, will have a more complete story to tell than a spec sheet alone provides.
2027 Honda Passport TrailSport Photo Gallery
Source: Honda. Images courtesy of Honda.
