How did we get to over 8,000 miles in six months? Lots of errands, road trips from Atlanta to Florida, Atlanta to Detroit, Chicago, its current home, Minnesota, and, of course, some family road trips to the cabin in Northern Minnesota.

Automakers are calling for longer intervals between service stops than ever before, and while we don’t necessarily love the idea of putting 8,000 miles on the odometer before performing an oil change, we’re abiding by Honda’s recommendations.

So, what does the first service stop include for our Pilot, and what was it like?

2016 Honda Pilot Touring long-term road test, first service stop

2016 Honda Pilot Touring long-term road test, first service stop

The actual service requested

Our Pilot’s trip computer gave us a chime along with a pop-up notification at 8,216 miles informing us the A 1 maintenance was due soon. Scrolling through the trip computer we noted the Pilot’s oil sensor was reading that there was 15% oil life left.

We called our local Honda dealership and learned the A 1 service is an oil change (that’s the A part) and tire rotation (that’s the 1 part). We made an appointment and off we went.

In addition to the A 1 service we noted a few other things needing to be checked over with our Pilot. One of the clips on the front passenger door’s molding had popped out of place at some point either due to a passenger’s foot hitting it while exiting or from catching on something when closing the door. While we were able to pop it back in ourselves, it wasn’t as tight as it should be.

We’ve also noted some discrepancies in the average fuel economy our Pilot’s trip computer is reporting versus the fuel economy we are actually recording. We reached out to Honda about this and it is being looked into, but as requested by Honda, we noted it to the dealership as well during our service.

2016 Honda Pilot Touring long-term road test, first service stop

2016 Honda Pilot Touring long-term road test, first service stop

The experience

Upon pulling into the service area on a busy Monday morning we were immediately greeted by a friendly advisor. Soon we were introduced to our scheduled advisor, Angie, and we walked through the required service and other requested items. Within minutes we were off to the waiting room for some free coffee, cookies, TV, and wifi.

The issue was first spotted last October when workers noticed a fuel leak during a pre-delivery inspection, causing Honda and Yachiyo Manufacturing America (YMA) to investigate. The companies found the suspect fuel tank’s manufacturing records and discovered that the machinery indicated insufficient welds during assembly, although the tank was manually “judged to be okay.”

The first leak reported by a customer came in March, causing YMA to go through its records to find each instance of manual override, resulting in the recall. Again, the fuel tank had been robotically identified as suspect, but manually approved for production.

All affected vehicles will receive a new fuel tank.

Our long-term 2016 Honda Pilot Touring AWD that joined the TCC test fleet earlier this year finished up its duty in the mid-Atlantic states and has migrated north to the Midwest to report for family duty.

Family cars like the Pilot are all-important shuttles for children and gear, families and friends alike. Almost equally important are the miles per gallon those family cars return, which prompted us to check in: What kind of fuel economy is our 2016 Honda Pilot getting in the real world?

What we’re driving

Our White Diamond Pearl long-term Pilot arrived with a mere 259 miles on the odometer. After no time we were out of the break-in period.

Like all Pilot Touring SUVs with all-wheel drive, our family truckster comes standard with an impressive list of standard features. Starting with the standard 280-horsepower V-6, the Touring trim level adds a standard 9-speed automatic (an upgrade over the 6-speed found in less-expensive versions). EPA fuel economy is published at 19 mpg city, 26 highway, and 22 combined.

Based on our calculations, we’ve struggled to meet some of those numbers.

Fuel economy notes

Over our Pilot’s stint in the mid-Atlantic it consumed 289.59 gallons of gasoline over 5,554 miles. By the numbers, that’s a 19.2 mpg average, which is roughly close to the city rating.

How did we get there? Long stretches of city driving in between a handful of 600-mile highway trips—say, a 50/50 split. Now add in the break-in mileage. Continuing on as the odometer neared 5,813 miles, economy increased—barely—to 19.3 mpg. This was all done with an average of two adults and two adults’ worth of carry-on baggage.

Shuttling the car up north meant a long road trip to get it there. Starting from Atlanta, we drove the Pilot to Detroit, then on to Chicago before landing in Minneapolis. We averaged 22.7 mpg on the 1,650-mile journey and consumed 72.63 gallons of gasoline.

There are a couple of notes to make about that road trip: About two-thirds of our drive was without cruise control, and the final leg of the trip was into heavy headwinds. We kept the needle at reasonable highway speeds—over 70 mph—throughout most of the trip. One adult and two bags were on board for most of the trip, and for the final 200 miles from Minneapolis to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, we carried two adults, two children in car seats, a dog, and lots of gear.

We filled up the Pilot with regular unleaded, which cost anywhere from $2.69 in Detroit to $2.29 in Minneapolis.

Curiously, our trip computer overestimated our actual fuel economy—by 20 to 30 percent in some cases. We’ve reached out to Honda and they agreed that it’s abnormal for the trip computer to be that far off. We checked to see if there were any similar complaints filed with the NHTSA and didn’t find any. Honda said that they’ll investigate the issue when we bring the car in for service, so we’ll report back on what they say.

Pilot’s next flight

Over the coming months we’ll be taking our Pilot in for its first service, taking a closer look at the infotainment system and apps, checking out the safety tech, and looking at some accessories.

Of course, we’ll put it through the family-style challenges by which every crossover SUV should be measured. From installing child safety seats and cleaning up spills to hauling all the gear and “Tetris”-style loading and unloading, we’ll put the Pilot through its paces and dutifully report back.

Looking down the road, we’ll check its snow-readiness and keep an eye on fuel economy in mixed driving in future updates.

Honda was one of only two automakers to land multiple vehicles on the top ten list, the other being Kia, which was recognized for the 2016 Optima and Soul.

The all-new 2016 Honda Civic was named “Best Compact Sedan” on the strength of its driving dynamics and comfortable cabin.

“This redesigned Civic feels sporty and fun whether you’re driving it around town or on winding back roads,” wrote the editors at Edmunds.com. “Unlike its predecessors, however, it’s fairly quiet inside at speed, and its ride is more compliant than ever. The Civic has so much rear passenger space that families might not even need to consider the larger Honda Accord. Inside, the Civic’s design and materials approach Acura-grade refinement in the top Touring trim.”

2016 Honda Pilot Elite

2016 Honda Pilot Elite

The new Pilot, meanwhile, took top honors in the SUV category, thanks to its versatility and spaciousness.

“The Pilot has the most versatile interior this side of a minivan,” the experts raved. “There is a multitude of handy bins and twice as many cupholders as seats. The Pilot’s maximum cargo capacity of 83.9 cubic feet places it among the top of its competitors… In addition to being more spacious and functional inside than most of its competitors, the Pilot is also smaller and lighter. This relatively low weight combines with a stiffer structure to make the Pilot feel impressively solid, controlled and less cumbersome than you might expect for SUVs in this class.”

Now it’s time for the nitpicking.

Granted, the Pilot does many things very well–well enough to earn our Best Car To Buy 2016 award.

Some things could stand improvement, and some things it does are honestly better left to other technology providers, let’s say.

What we’re driving

Our Pilot is a $44,000 Touring AWD model, with White Diamond Pearl paint and a buckskin-colored leather cabin. It’s fitted with the standard 280-horsepower V-6 and a 9-speed automatic with paddle shift controls. We have rear seat entertainment via a Blu-ray player and second-row screens, a fold-away third-row seat as well as a power tailgate.

In front, there’s touchscreen navigation; heated power front seats; remote start; keyless ignition; and an audio system with satellite radio and Bluetooth audio streaming. Its standard safety suite including a multi-view rearview camera, adaptive cruise control, a lane-departure warning system, lane-keeping assistance, and forward-collision warnings with automatic emergency braking.

In our first 5,000 miles, we’ve overcome our initial pause for Pilot features like pushbutton transmission controls, the beep of its real-time traffic data system, and the lack of a volume knob for passengers (there’s a hard button for the driver on the steering wheel, after all). But we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out a handful of things that could stand a round of improvement.

Here’s what we’d fix:

The homebrew-ish infotainment interface. We complain a lot about infotainment systems, everything from Ford‘s MyFord Touch (may it rest in agony) and the roller-controller brigade from Germany and South Korea. Honda’s system is pure touchscreen, which we prefer, and it has big touch-and-swipe tiles for mostly easy operation.

Fitting for the company that builds the Odyssey, Honda’s setup feels like a third-rate gaming system. Some tabs on screens are small, low-contrast affairs; toggling from Map to Audio functions is a legit first-world hassle, and Honda’s Garmin-licensed maps offer none of the gorgeous visual depth of some systems in other $44,000 vehicles.

None of this leads to hair loss, stomach upset, headaches, dizzy spells, or anything that requires a warning label. Still, five minutes in a Chrysler Pacifica shows how a well-developed system can lure buyers into a different vehicle altogether.

No Apple CarPlay. At least for the 2016 model year. For 2017, Honda will update its microphones and firmware to enable CarPlay, the best information-overload cure we’ve sampled yet. Our 2016 model doesn’t have the right mic, so it’s not possible to retrofit for CarPlay use. Sad!

Ride noise. Our Pilot rides on 20-inch wheels, and while neither the size of the tread nor its sidewall height hurts the ride quality much, it does make for a lot of tire slap. The Pilot’s suspension also makes more noise as it damps out the road–more than in the Ridgeline pickup, in fact.

Juddery stop/start. Shutting off the engine at stoplights, and kickstarting it back to life, is a relatively new technology making its way into mainstream vehicles in a big way. Some drivetrains just don’t handle the combination of restart and launch well while a vehicle is in a drive gear, and the Pilot is one of them. Catch it off-guard, and it restarts with a mild lurch, counter to its otherwise smooth operation.

Better seat bottoms. The Pilot is an expert at maximizing interior space. That said, its seats don’t have much bolstering, and the flat seat bottoms grow more noticeable the longer you drive. We’ve put in 700-mile trips without any real drama, but more support at the sides would be welcome.

That’s as we expected. We spent a lot of time with the Pilot last year in its run-up to our Best Car To Buy 2016 award. It was just about a year ago we took it for a first drive, and six months ago when it won our trophy.

Since then, we’ve shuttled it from the mid-Atlantic to the deep south. In between, we’ve driven some fine new competition for the Honda, including the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, Honda’s own Ridgeline pickup truck, and the buffed-up Ford Explorer.

Now, some 5,000 miles into our long-term drive, we’re making some lists. First up: the good things we count on every time we press the start button.

What we love about it

Our Pilot is a Touring AWD model, with White Diamond Pearl paint and a buckskin-colored leather cabin. It’s fitted with the standard 280-horsepower V-6 and a 9-speed automatic with paddle shift controls. Configured for 7 passengers, it has a second-row pair of captain chairs and Blu-Ray entertainment screens, and a fold-away third-row seat as well as a power tailgate.

In front, there’s touchscreen navigation; heated power front seats; remote start; keyless ignition; and an audio system with satellite radio and Bluetooth audio streaming. Its standard safety suite including a multi-view rearview camera, adaptive cruise control, a lane-departure warning system, lane-keeping assistance, and forward-collision warnings with automatic emergency braking.

Here’s where it’s proven its worth, so far.

It hits a sweet spot between crossover and minivan. No, the Pilot doesn’t handle as well as some SUVs with more wagon-like shapes and lower centers of gravity. It does a better job at approaching that task with space efficiency a top priority. Honda’s maximized room for 8 people while giving a good measure of composure and all-weather traction. The third-row seat in particular is the best we’ve sampled in a vehicle without sliding doors, and it’s better even than some traditional minivans. For anyone looking to dump the sliding side doors, the Pilot’s priorities are in order.

It tracks the highway well. The Pilot’s all-season tires, electric power steering, and lane-keeping assist make it a silent, swift runner on long highway slogs. It holds an un-SUV-like lock on a straight path on well-kept pavement, and even if its lane-keep assist is a first-gen system (it feels less smooth and slightly more jerky than advanced systems from makes such as BMW), it still allows a few seconds of hands-off control, just long enough to reprimand passengers in the third row.

It’s nailing its combined fuel economy rating. So far, we’ve hit about 21-22 mpg in combined fuel economy. We’ll have a more in-depth look at the numbers in a couple of weeks, but according to the fuel logs and the slightly optimistic trip-economy gauge, we’re turning in what the EPA intended.

It’s good for long-distance comfort for at least 6 passengers. It’s tough to get crowded out in the Pilot. The interior is cavernous, and though they’re slim on the support side, the seats have enough padding to be comfortable for hours of driving, in both the first and second rows. With two smaller passengers in the way-back, the Pilot makes economic sense for big trips where 6 coach tickets and the hours-long wait at TSA just doesn’t compute.

That enormous center console holds just about anything, and everything. Family vehicles need lots of storage. The Pilot has a center console that could double as carry-on luggage, if it were detachable. It holds a box of tissues, a couple of iPads, stacks of wet wipes, sunglasses by the bushel, fast-food bags, and has a hard sliding cover to protect it all from prying eyes (and assorted hand tools). There’s a high-power charge port in our Pilot Touring’s console, perfect for keeping those tablets on the ready, too.

This spring, we’ve been hitting the road–a lot–in the long-term 2016 Honda Pilot Touring AWD that joined our test fleet earlier in the year.

With rivals like the Ford Explorer, Nissan Pathfinder, and Hyundai Santa Fe, the Pilot has some big orders to fill. That’s before you factor in an excellent new Chrysler Pacifica minivan that’s in the same neighborhood of utility and flexibility.

The Pilot has to nail the “utility” part of “sport-utility vehicle,” has to comport itself with the mild-mannered ride and handling of a “crossover,” and frankly, it has to prove itself to be the great deal we thought when we named it TCC’s Best Car To Buy 2016.

The question of the day is, which Pilot does the best job as family support vehicle–Pilot LX, EX, EX-L, Touring, or Elite?

How we’re driving

A refresher on what we’re driving–it’s a white Pilot Touring with all-wheel drive. New on arrival, it’s now over the break-in mileage limits, and turning in something north of 20 miles per gallon combined. (We’ll report more on fuel economy in a post very soon.)

Our Pilot has the standard 280-hp V-6, a 9-speed automatic, and an EPA combined rating of 22 mpg. It sports leather seating, one-touch fold-and-slide second-row seats, a ginormous center console big enough to hold iPads, tissue boxes, and bags of Costco’s addictive rice-cracker mix.

Keeping us entertained on the long slogs it’s taken up the eastern seaboard and down Tobacco Road, the Pilot has high-output USB ports for powering smartphones in modem mode; a Blu-Ray rear-seat entertainment system; and a touchscreen infotainment system with satellite radio (a present saved for Chill, just as with every press car on the planet), and navigation. Remote start, keyless ignition, and a power tailgate top off the functional bits.

On the safety front, we’re already finding ourselves missing a conventional set of blind-spot monitors, though the Pilot’s wide-angle rearview camera is handy. We’re mixed on its LaneWatch side-view camera and its lane-keeping assistance, but more on that, also, in future posts.

Out the door, our Pilot would cost $43,870 at the dealer, before haggling.

All told, the Pilot Touring’s base price comes in at $43,700. According to Honda’s information and pricing Web site for shoppers, there’s already been a $170 price increase.

How we’d order it

Sure, you could save some money on your Honda Pilot. If we were ordering one to keep as a forever car, we’d focus on three of its five trim levels, with a careful hand on the pen that checks some expensive options.

The skipper: The base $31,045 Honda Pilot LX is a trim level we’d skip. It comes with the V-6 and a 6-speed automatic, a combination we’ve sampled and thought well of; front-wheel drive, with an option for all-wheel drive; the usual power features; a cloth interior; touchscreen audio with a USB port; 17-inch wheels; and air conditioning. What the LX lacks are some features that make families choose a big crossover SUV over a sedan or a smaller vehicle, touches like an easy-sliding second-row seat, or even safety features such as a forward-collision warning system. Honda will let you pay $382 for a tent that drapes over the Pilot LX’s rear end–but at this price point, you can’t opt into some of its better safety and convenience touches, at all.

The value meal: The $34,380 Pilot EX is the Honda crossover SUV for big families on a smaller budget. Over the LX’s standard features, it adds remote start; satellite radio; two more USB ports; and air conditioning for the back two rows. For an extra thousand bucks–$20 a payment on a 48-month loan–it’s well worth adding the Honda Sensing safety suite. In addition to the EX’s side-view camera, it adds adaptive cruise control, lane-collision warnings, forward-collision warnings with automatic emergency braking, and lane-keeping assistance.