2025 Honda Pilot Black Edition: First Look

Because shiny trim is so passé.

Beth Nichols | 

Mar 19, 2024 | 2 min read

Honda

Honda is once again embracing the blackout craze, restoring a Black Edition to the top of the Pilot lineup for 2025. To create this trim level, the Japanese automaker followed a familiar formula: Take the top model — in this case, the Pilot Elite — swap its silvery bits for black ones, slap on some badges, and charge a premium for it. To learn what specifically distinguishes the Black Edition from the other trims, read on.

Gotta Get That Gloss

As you might guess, the exterior of the Pilot Black Edition goes heavy on the black. The glossy 20-inch wheels, side-mirror caps, window and door trim, front and rear fascia accents — all of it is black. The Black Edition badging on the nose and tail, however, remains bright.

Buyers can, of course, complete the look with black paint, or they can opt for dark gray, white, red, or deep blue — the last three of which cost about $500 extra.

Honda

Inside, It's More Like the Black and Red Edition

The black theme continues inside Honda's three-row SUV, where it then blends with red in places. The result is a patchwork of black and burgundy leather stitched together with red thread.

Front-seat passengers can also bask in the glow of red ambient lighting emanating from the center console, dash, and doors, as well as rest their heads and their feet against embossed Black Edition logos.

Honda

The Black Edition Increases the Honda Pilot's Price and Bumps Off the LX Trim

With the Black Edition's insertion at the top of the Pilot lineup, last year's $38,000 LX fell off the bottom, leaving the roughly $41,000 Sport as the new entry-level model. Honda also increased the price of each carryover trim level by $300, which pushes the feature-heavy Elite model over the $54,000 line.

The Black Edition, meanwhile, is identical to the Elite in all the ways that matter — standard equipment, suspension tune, wheel size, you name it — and yet it hovers near $56,000. Figure about a $1,500 premium for the (mostly) blacked-out treatment.

All vehicle pricing includes MSRP plus destination charges (set at the time of publication) and will be rounded to the nearest thousand.

Beth Nichols

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Beth Nichols stumbled into automotive journalism and found her footing, jumping between a few car magazines before going freelance. Her head, once full of useless facts about literature and art history, now holds useless facts about vehicles. She edits, checks, and occasionally creates content for Capital One, and though she understands it’s customary to write a bio in the third person, I don’t like it.