HONDA Accord Review

The facelift introduced for the Accord range last year brought very little changes to the interior, with one of the most important being an upgrade for the soundproofing, something that you can really feel and that makes the car suitable for family and long trip use.

The Accord shouldn't be one of those cars that splits this chapter into "front" and "rear" in terms of space, especially since it exceeds the mid-size segment's usual limits in terms of length, but it does.

The front passengers have all the space in the world and are treated with a pair of comfortable seats you can guess this just by taking a look at them In the case of our test car, these were covered in perforated leather and came with a heating function.

While in the rear we get a 2+1 arrangement, covered in the same fine leather, the space isn't as generous as you'd expect it to be, especially if we're talking about headroom, with the latter issue coming as a drawback brought by the line of the roof.

Honda's designers managed to create a modern layout of the cabin, so you do get the feeling that you're riding in a car that received a lot of attention from its creators. However, the interior is let down by some of the plastics, especially those used on the center console, which seem to be borrowed from early mobile phones.

Getting back to the tech details, we'll talk about the suspension, which is biased towards handling, but it does manage to offer a decent ride on many types of surfaces, with the engineers tweaking it for the facelifted model. The vehicle also comes packed with multiple gadgets, which make life on board a pleasant experience.

Honda is the automaker that produces the most internal combustion engines per year, powering almost every imaginable means of transportation that can use such a powerplant. Thus, you'd expect the company to make top-level engines for its cars and you really wouldn't be wrong.

Honda's petrol engines are all about VTEC (Variable Valve Timing and Electronic Lift Control), but there's a big misconception that this only means that they can rev high and therefore are only suitable for sports cars.

This basically means that you've got and advanced variable timing system, but the fact that it was the first of its kind doesn't just mean that you've got something to brag about when you're chatting with your friends, but also that the Japanese engineers have had a lot of time to perfect the system.

Thus, it doesn't just offer high revs and an impressive specific output, but also low fuel consumption.

In the case of our test car, this meant that the 2.0-liter four-cylinder, naturally aspirated powerplant, which delivers 156 hp at 6,300 rpm and 193 Nm (142 lb-ft) between 4,100 and 5,000 rpm, and is a wonderful toy in the superior half of the rev range, having no problem with playing at 7,000 rpm, is also a fan of efficiency.

Honda has gifted the car with a gearshift indicator, placed inside the rev counter, which tells you when to shift up or down, based on the vehicle's speed and the position of the throttle pedal.

You'll be surprised to find out that if you just you the first third of the gas pedal, like many drivers do when they want to achieve efficiency, the car will tel you to shift up at revs as low as 1,800 rpm. While in a "normal" engine (one without variable timing) this would mean that the petrol isn't burned efficient and lead to all sorts of issues, such as lack of grunt and hazardous substances settling on the engine internals, the VTEC system allows this powerplant to operate perfectly at such revs.

Doing so ,we managed to almost match Honda's official efficiency figures, and we did this without being left behind by the other cars.

The engine is matted to what we found to be one of the best manuals we've ever driven. The six-speed gearbox is the only part of this car that's actually sporty, from the level, that you could swear is borrowed from an S2000 sports car, to the precise shifts, which make the process a true joy.

As for the chassis, this rides on double wishbone front up front and uses a multi-link setup for the rear, which means that it's pretty easy for the driver to keep things under control.

All in all, the Accord doesn't bring too much state-of-the-art technology, but it does offer you plenty of goodies that are advanced enough and mixed well, creating a pleasant experience. This is true for the tech bits and pieces, as well as for the gadgets found on the car.

For this chapter, the score offered to the Accord depends of how you look at the car. If you analize it in isolation, you find a car packed with all sorts of goodies, but if you take a look at the segment it belongs to, you'll notice that these have become common features.

The list of features includes leather-finished seats with a heating function, a power function and memory, a power sunroof (nope, it's not a panoramic one), Bi-Xenon headlights with an adaptive function and a high-beam assistant, as well as a rain sensor.

It also comes with features like a navigation system and a rear-view camera, as well as a dual-zone automatic climate control system and an audio system that uses 10 speakers, including a subwoofer.

However, the LCD screen placed deep within the dashboard (at the top), offers graphics that remind use of early video games, offering the impression of being at least one generation behind what the German rivals have to offer.

The satnav system also brought a funny feature: the female voice it uses is very close to the standard one used by certain translation software - a cold, robotic tone accompanies the instructions.

The Accord does know how to offer more impressive stunts, applying them in the safety area, but our test car wasn't able to pull them. We are talking about the the LKAS Lane Keeping Assist System) that uses a camera placed in the windshield to "look ahead" and "see" the lanes, being able to steer the car in order for this to keep a certain one, as well as the Collision Mitigation Braking System, an automatic braking system that relies on a radar to scan the roads ahead and goes as far as applying the brakes if this is considered necessary.

The Honda Accord was tested by the Euro NCAP back in 2009, before the facelift was applied, receiving a five-star rating. However, the revamp only brought minor changes, with the only relevant ones being the addition of Bi-Xenon headlights gifted with both an adaptive function, as well as a high-beam assistant.

The vehicle earned an 86 percent rating for adult occupant protection, 79 percent rating for the protection offered to child occupants and 54 percent for pedestrian protection.

The vehicle passed the frontal impact test with flying colors, but in the side impact test (the more severe pole one) the protection for the chest was rated as weak, while the rear impact test showed a marginal protection against whiplash injuries.

It's time to leave the worst case scenario behind and move on to the passive safety area, telling you that Honda offers two extremely advanced assistance technologies for the Accord.

We are talking about the CMBS (Collision Mitigation Braking System), which monitors the road ahead, warns the driver if an impact in imminent and even applies the brakes to reduce the consequences of a crash, as well as the LKAS (Lane Keeping Assist System), which scans the road and determined the number of lanes, keeping the car on a given one by using the steering. Unfortunately, both are optional and none of them was present on our test car.

As a conclusion, the Accord is a pretty safe car to keep you family in, but you do have to access you bank account to make the most out f it.

The Accord is an interesting proposal in the mid-size segment, with the term that perfectly describes the car being "border-crossing". First of all, the vehicle pushes the upper limits of its segment in terms of length, getting close to full-size sedans. Then there's the positioning of the car: Honda wants us to see it as a premium vehicle, while in reality it mixes premium elements with mediocre ones.

Fortunately, the pricing is more convenient that those of mid-size cars that use this tag. The range-topping equipment level and the base-spec four-cylinder petrol engine we tested brought the Accord to a little over EUR30,000, which, in today's exchange rates means a tad under USD40,000.

Thus, the car looks more expensive than it actually is, but its interior is by no means premium, as it comes with certain materials that don't belong in the same sentence with this word and doesn't excel in terms of rear space.

The Accord also comes with sporty ambitions, but, in the configuration we tested, only manages to fulfill these in terms of feeling, with the actual performance being average. The vehicle offers decent driving dynamics, but not a tenth of G more.

Despite this, the rev-happy 2.0-liter VTEC engine, as well as the sporty & precise six-speed manual allow the driver to enjoy the moments spent behind the wheel. In terms of efficiency though, the engineers have really done a good job, with the engine, together with certain underbody aerodynamic tweaks and low rolling resistance tires allowing you to almost match the official efficiency figures without having to try too hard.

However, the Accord never manages to shine in any way, so it doesn't have something that it can do better than any other rival in its segment: It looks good, but it's not that special. if feels sporty, but only a bit and so you can never actually build a strong case for it. Thus, you have to look at the car in isolation and see if it manages to grow on you if you want to give it a chance.

It's a car that manages to give you some good times once you get behind its wheel, but one that is forgotten once you get out of it, with the only exception to this being its manual gearbox.