The Honda CR-V is mainly seen as a decent rival to the Toyota RAV4. A sensible, smaller, SUV that serves as an exceptionally good family car. You’ll get a good amount of cargo space, decent fuel economy, and a few ADAS features that make general driving easier.
But in its early days, the CR-V (or comfortable runaround vehicle if you’ve ever wondered what that stood for) was aimed at outdoor enthusiasts. Sedans and wagons were family cars in those days, and SUVs were generally aimed at people who enjoyed hiking. To facilitate that kind of active lifestyle, the CR-V came equipped with a pretty nifty outdoorsy feature. It had a hidden picnic table.
The Honda CR-V had a picnic table stashed in its rear
Despite coming as standard on all first and second generation Honda CR-Vs, the picnic table was a bit of a hidden feature. It was generally stored beneath the rear cargo mat, where the spare tire usually went. Early CR-Vs had the spare attached to the tailgate, so owners wouldn’t even stumble across the table when they were unfortunate enough to have a flat. It was very much one of those “if you know, you know” features with only a line or two in the brochure and owner’s manual pointing towards its existence.
It wasn’t anything particularly fancy either, just a hard plastic top with foldable metal legs. But it did the job and fit neatly in its out of the way storage spot.
Pricing for used tables varies. On eBay, the tables were selling for between $100 and $200 each at the time of writing. However, there is a way to get one a lot cheaper. Junkyards tend to price things by part, and don’t generally have a category for “picnic tables.” So you’ll likely see it listed as a spare tire cover or some kind of panel. This means you can snag one for as little as $5 if you dig around enough.
Honda recently brought the feature back
The picnic table was eventually removed in the third generation CR-V. It was a cool feature, but not something Honda made a lot of noise about. Nor was it something that could be described as a “fan favorite” given that many owners drove their CR-Vs for years without even noticing it was there.
When the spare tire was relocated from the tailgate to the well under the cargo hold, Honda didn’t go to the effort of reworking the table into the redesigned space. Which means if you want to drive a CR-V with this feature, you’ll need to find a first or second generation model built in 2006 or earlier.
However, there is a Honda with a picnic table still around. The Japanese brand recently revived the feature in the 2026 Honda Passport. Though rather than being included as standard it’s a $425 add on in that case. Because it’s 2026, and quirky fun things don’t come free.
