The 2027 Passport TrailSport that Honda associates Abby Connolly and Amy Hein will run as Team #208 in the X-Cross class. Photo: American Honda Motor Co. (cropped)
Most factory motorsport programs begin with a homologation sheet and a parts catalog. Honda’s newest one begins with a paper map and a compass.
Two engineers from the Honda Automotive Development Center in Raymond, Ohio, Abby Connolly and Amy Hein, will drive a 2027 Passport TrailSport in the 2026 Rebelle Rally, which leaves Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 8 and runs through October 17. Honda says the SUV competes without modifications to its chassis, suspension, 3.5-liter V6, 10-speed automatic or i-VTM4 torque-vectoring all-wheel drive. Both drivers are Rebelle rookies. They’ll run as Team #208, the “Good TrailSports,” in what Honda describes as the X-Cross Bone Stock class.
A showroom-spec crossover, two first-timers, no GPS. On paper that reads like a handicap. In this event it’s closer to a strategy, because the Rebelle doesn’t pay out for the thing most race cars are built to do.
A rally where the quickest crew can lose
The Rebelle scores checkpoints, not elapsed time. Under the organizer’s competition format, green checkpoints carry a big flag and a staffer and are worth 20 points, and teams are required to reach every one. Blue checkpoints, worth 10, get a small flag or pole. Black diamond checkpoints, worth 5, get nothing at all. You find them because your plotting was right, or you drive past them. Teams choose which optional checkpoints to chase each day, so route planning in the morning matters more than pace in the afternoon. Enduro sections add roadbook navigation, scored either on staying on route or on hitting timing controls at a set speed.
Phones and GPS stay out of it; the tools are maps, compass and roadbook. If our explainer on how rally raid differs from traditional stage rally was a primer on navigation-heavy competition, the Rebelle pushes that idea further from the stopwatch than almost anything else in North American motorsport. It’s orienteering with a V6.
That changes what the car is for. It doesn’t need to be quick. It needs to follow the navigator’s heading for 10 to 12 hours a day, which is Honda’s own estimate, without forcing a detour around every wash bank it can’t clear. Ground clearance and approach angles convert directly into points: a car that can take the straight line to a blue checkpoint saves time and fuel that a car hunting for a way around simply loses.
What Honda actually changed for 2027
This isn’t a decal package. Honda’s September 9 release on the 2027 Passport TrailSport lists these gains over the 2026 model:
| Measurement | 2026 Passport TrailSport | 2027 Passport TrailSport | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground clearance | 8.27 in. | 9.65 in. | +1.38 in. |
| Approach angle | 23° | 25° | +2° |
| Departure angle | 23° | 25° | +2° |
| Breakover angle | 20° | 23° | +3° |
Honda says nearly 70% of the major suspension components were redesigned, including springs, dampers, control arms, stabilizer bars and knuckles, for 28 new or reengineered suspension and chassis parts in all. The front and rear driveshafts and the front subframe were also reworked to handle the extra ride height and wheel travel. Honda calls the result the most off-road-capable SUV it has ever built.
The driveshaft and subframe work is the part worth paying attention to. Lifting a crossover is easy on a spec sheet and messy in practice: raise the body and you steepen the joint angles in the driveline, which costs durability under load, and you move the suspension’s geometry away from where it was developed. Redesigning those pieces rather than stacking taller springs is the difference between a lift and a new suspension. Seven or more days of rock, sand and silt with no service crew is a fair way to find out whether the angles hold up.
If I had to pick one number to watch, it’s the 3-degree breakover gain. Breakover is what hangs a crossover up on its belly at the top of a crest or the lip of a wash. That’s exactly the terrain a navigator is tempted to cross head-on rather than spend 20 minutes driving around.
The X-Cross problem: no low range, and a Subaru habit
X-Cross is the Rebelle’s class for all-wheel-drive vehicles without a low-range transfer case. That describes the Passport exactly, and it describes the opposition too. Recent history favors experience. In 2024, Carey Lando and Andrea Shaffer won the class in a 2014 Subaru Outback. In 2025, the same pair won it again in a 2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid. Back-to-back winners in a navigation event are a hard target for two rookies, no matter how much clearance they’re carrying.
That’s why the more realistic prize is the Bone Stock award. The organizer gives it to the top stock vehicle with no performance modifications in each class, and the manufacturer collects a trophy alongside the team. Ford took the X-Cross version in 2024 with a Bronco Sport Badlands Sasquatch. BMW took it in 2025 with an X5 xDrive40i. Neither car won the class outright, and both brands still left the desert with something to put in an ad.
There’s also a small detail in the fine print. When Honda ran the then-new 2026 Passport in its 2024 Rebelle debut, the company said the only deviation from stock was a set of Maxxis RAZR All-Terrain tires. This year’s release lists no exceptions at all. If the 2027 car really is on factory rubber, it’s a tougher test of the new suspension and a cleaner Bone Stock case.
Who’s driving, and why Honda keeps rotating crews
Connolly is a senior design engineer in Honda’s Powersports power performance group. Hein is a senior test engineer in its battery-electric group. Their day jobs are not SUV chassis development, which is part of the point: Honda frames the Honda of America Racing Team (HART), a volunteer associate program it says has run for more than 30 years, as a way to feed real-world lessons back into future products. Connolly has been part of HART since 2021, assisting on multiple Pikes Peak International Hill Climb efforts. Hein says the pair took Honda’s associate off-road training, practiced in the Michigan sand dunes, and spent evenings plotting maps and running mock enduros.
This is Honda’s eighth year at the Rebelle, and the 2024 Passport entry also used #208 and also put two Ohio-based rookies in the seats. Rotating crews makes sense for an engineering-feedback program. It makes less sense if the goal is beating teams that come back every October with years of plotting experience. Honda appears to know which of those games it’s playing.
The business case for leaving the car alone
Honda’s September release says TrailSport trims made up more than 80% of Passport sales as of June 2026. When the off-road trim effectively is the product, a trophy for the car exactly as a customer buys it is worth more to the brand than a modified entry that wins something no dealer can sell. It’s a very different philosophy from the factory-built approach, like the time Ford sent a fully restricted Dakar truck to America’s toughest desert race. One sells capability through engineering bragging rights; the other sells it through a car you can drive off the lot on Saturday.
What to watch from October 8
- The route. The organizer has billed 2026 as only the second three-state Rebelle, adding new ground in Utah alongside California and Nevada. Honda says the finish lands near the Imperial Sand Dunes in California. Soft sand is where a car without low range works hardest.
- The day count. Honda’s release counts seven days of scored competition. The organizer’s announcement describes a prologue followed by nine straight days off-grid. The official scoring will settle which days count.
- Black diamonds. Rookie teams that chase the unmarked 5-point checkpoints early are telling you they trust their plotting. Teams that skip them are protecting their green-checkpoint score.
- Live scoring. Team #208 can be followed through the Rebelle Rally live tracking and scoring site.
The Rebelle also fits the bigger picture we laid out in why rally racing could be America’s next motorsport boom. It’s a format that rewards the crew that thinks clearly at hour 11 rather than the one with the biggest budget. If the Passport comes home with Bone Stock silverware, Honda gets to say its new suspension passed a test where nobody was timing it, only checking whether it showed up at the right flag.
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