Odagaki conceived the idea of the third-row seat folding into a floor compartment, and he worked with his team to include a 'center aisle.' The team determined a minimum interior height of 1.2 meters to retain the aisle and favored a design with a low floor - to provide ease of passenger entry and exit, easy garage-ability, low roof-loading height, as well as enhanced productivity on the assembly line. Odagaki continued working with an 'underground' team, using as its design credo the concept of a 'personal jet' - which in turn led to the car's original PJ concept code-name. At the project's inception, the team was considering variations for the project from 4-cylinder to V6 alternatives, when the project was canceled. in September 1990 with a small sub-team to conduct a review of the U.S. In the course of developing the Odyssey, it became paramount to circumvent these obstacles and conceive a feasible interior package that could use existing manufacturing facilities with minimal investment. The Odyssey was engineered by Kunimichi Odagaki, then a chief engineer at the Honda's Research and Development Center, along with a team of 20 members - in the wake of Japan's recession of the early 1990s and the possibility of a 25-percent tariffs if the minivans were imported to the U.S. Isuzu offered a rebadged version of the Odyssey from 1996 to 1999 as the Isuzu Oasis. The EX accommodated six passengers (using two removable second row captain's chairs in lieu of the bench) and offered additional equipment including a roof rack, alloy wheels, power driver's seat height adjustment, power moonroof, remote keyless entry system, fog lights (later model years), body-colored side moldings and mirrors, map lights, and 200-watt AM/FM/cassette six-speaker audio system. The LX accommodated seven passengers with two front buckets, a removable three-seat middle bench, and a 2-seat third row bench. Honda marketed the first-generation Odyssey in two trim levels.

The design featured unibody construction, dual airbags, dual gloveboxes, dual zone heating and cooling with 20 percent greater capacity than an Accord's system (overhead rear fan-speed adjustment control, and main control switch over the front-seat passenger), conventional rear swing-open rather than sliding doors, and a third row seat that could fold and tumble into a compartment beneath the floor - the spacesaver spare tire carried inside, on the right, rear wall of the cabin. This class of vehicles would subsequently become known as Compact MPV. The 1995 Odyssey was introduced in 1994 as Honda's first minivan - based on the Accord platform, with a 4-cylinder engine, all-disc anti-lock braking, all wishbone suspension, and a four-speed automatic transmission with a steering-column-mounted shifter and a hill-hold feature, marketed as Grade Logic. Both versions of the Odyssey are currently sold in the Middle East.

Both versions of the Odyssey were sold in Japan at Honda Clio dealership locations. Honda also offered the larger North American Odyssey in Japan as the LaGreat (ラグレイト, Ragureito) beginning in June 1999 through 2005. Since model year 1999, Honda has marketed a larger (large MPV-class) Odyssey in North America and a smaller Odyssey in Japan and other markets. Subsequent generations diverged to reflect market variations, and Honda built a plant in Lincoln, Alabama, United States, incorporating the ability to manufacture larger models. The first generation Odyssey was marketed in Europe as the Honda Shuttle. The result was a smaller minivan, in the compact MPV class, that was well received in the Japanese domestic market and less well received in North America. The Odyssey had originally been conceived and engineered in Japan, in the wake of the country's economic crisis of the 1990s – which in turn imposed severe constraints on the vehicle's size and overall concept, dictating the minivan's manufacture in an existing facility with minimal modification. For the North American market, the Honda Odyssey, is a minivan manufactured and marketed by Japanese automaker Honda since 1994, now in its fifth generation, which began in 2018.

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