In designing the 2006 Honda Ridgeline’s stereo, the ergonomics experts must have assumed that most owners’ fingers would be more familiar with Caress than Carhartts, because it would be darn near impossible to operate anything except the volume while wearing work gloves. And if you’ve got a Ridgeline RTL with navigation, you’ve gotta power the display screen out of the way to access the in-dash six-disc CD changer. At the very least, Honda could have provided a nice, big tuning knob to go along with the nice, big volume knob. By contrast, the dual-zone climate controls are a model of perfection, featuring large, logically-clustered, well-marked buttons flanked by gigantic temperature knobs.

The Ridgeline’s remaining controls are funky, mainly because they’re placed where you don’t expect to find them. For instance, the button that activates the cruise control is way down low on the lower left dash panel right next to the stability control “kill” button and the parking brake release. This is a ridiculous spot to locate a feature used so frequently – especially since all other cruise functions are placed front-and-center on the steering wheel. We also noticed that the fuel release lever is on the floor where it most likely will fill with the same grit, grime, mud, and snow that the super-duper floor mats are charged with trapping. Finally, the fuel gauge has no arrow pointing to the side of the truck where filler neck is located, but that’s more a problem for people like us who drive a Ridgeline for a week and then move on to the next set of wheels.

Since our Ridgeline RTL test trucks came with voice-control navigation systems, we gave ‘em a whirl and found the voice commands not terribly helpful. For example, we couldn’t get our California test truck to recognize “Irvine” as a city when programming a destination or “Korean” for restaurants – and we weren’t so juvenile as to try a fake Russian accent while making the commands. Moving on to manual programming, we found that the system’s small buttons and sensitive joystick toggle resulted in many errors, so it would be nice to have a “Back” button on the dash (there’s one on the steering wheel, which is extra work when your hand is flitting about on the dashboard). The last method for programming is the touch screen, but the QWERTY display is a bad idea since you’re not sitting at your cubicle typing a nasty-gram to the accounts payable department. A simpler ABCDEFG layout would be better.

Honda does include useful features with the navigation system. Handy buttons to zoom the map display and to cancel navigation instructions are sitting right there on the dash – no need to cycle through menus looking for these features. There’s also a slick scheduling calendar, a calculator, Zagat restaurant ratings, and a voice command “help desk.”

Just don’t ask about Korean cuisine or Irvine, Calif., and you should be fine.