Honda has a reputation in the car community — quite an ambiguous reputation, actually. Some enthusiasts are outspoken haters of Honda because they're tired of teenagers in old Civics waking them up in the early hours of the morning. Others are absolutely enamored with Honda because they have made some truly great cars, enthusiast-oriented and otherwise.
If there's one thing we can't deny about Honda, it's how good the company is at making engines. Honda's powertrains have been used as tuning platforms for decades, and even though the automaker is good at making four-cylinders, it is also quite proficient at the V6, even though it hasn't been doing it for nearly as long. Some of Honda's engines are also complete horsepower juggernauts.
One of the most enduring members of Honda's V6 family is the J35, which has done service in more than a fair share of Hondas for over 15 years. We can't talk about the J35 without mentioning the first Honda vehicle in North America that carried it. The J-series V6 was the effective replacement for the C-series, and the first production Honda to be powered by a J series motor was the second generation of one of North America's most ubiquitous minivans, the Odyssey, introduced in 1998 for the 1999 model year.
The previous generation Odyssey used a four-cylinder, so with the V6, there was plenty of additional power and performance, certainly more than enough to transport all the things you might want to transport in a minivan. It was actually the.