Honda has been stretching itself in a few, shall we say, new directions recently. Besides launching its new line of Earth Dreams–branded engines, the company has tried its hand at the ultra-high-performance lawn-tractor game, as well as the, uh, vacuum market. Yep, Honda stuck a vacuum cleaner in the 2014 Odyssey minivan, a move far more rooted in reality than a 130-mph grass-cutter. It would be easy to write off the Odyssey’s built-in HondaVac vacuum as a gimmick—and an expensive one, at that—but after trying one out for ourselves, we can say it is a serious piece of hardware.
Created by Shop-Vac for Honda, the device features a replaceable filter and bag, as well as a variety of attachments and even the ability to run with the car’s ignition switched off. It is standard on the top-of-the-line $45,280 Odyssey Touring Elite trim level, and it lives behind a pair of doors in the driver’s side of the trunk. (Sorry, the vacuum isn’t available on lesser Odysseys.) The suction hose and nozzle attachments are found behind the upper door, while the filter and bag live in a slick slide-out plastic assembly behind the lower opening. We found the vacuum easy to use, and filter and bag replacement were a breeze. But the most important part of any vacuum is, of course, its suckage—so here are the HondaVac’s pertinent inhaling features, by the numbers:
2: Number of head attachments that the HondaVac comes with; one is a wide-mouth design, the other is narrow for tighter spaces.
0.5: Distance, in inches, from a pile of Honey Bunches of Oats that the vacuum’s nozzle needed to be before said bits of cereal were sucked up. Fitting the wide-mouth nozzle allowed for a greater suckage distance—1 inch—while the narrow-mouth attachment could snap up cereal from a whopping 1.5 inches away. For reference, our garage’s full-size Shop-Vac could suck up crumbs from as far as 3 inches away.
16.5: Length, in feet, of the HondaVac’s hose when stretched to its fullest. Fun fact: At its full length, the hose can nearly reach the middle of the Odyssey’s windshield—the outside of the windshield. So, yeah, the vacuum truly could be used to clean the minivan’s every nook and cranny, even portions of the engine bay.
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1.42: Liters of capacity (approximate) in the HondaVac’s replaceable bag. We measured this using liquid before realizing that the bag is designed only to hold dry detritus; the ensuing leakage means our measured capacity is perhaps slightly lower than the actual figure.
8: Minutes of run time with the Odyssey’s engine shut off; the vacuum will operate indefinitely with the engine running.
