In the decades since I first got into cars, much has changed about the auto industry. Back then, two-door coupes were commonplace and in fact were among the best selling cars on the market thanks to nameplates like Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Ford Thunderbird. No mainstream car-line was complete without two-door, four-door and station wagon variants. Today, aside from performance models, there is but one midsize two-door coupe left, the Honda Accord.
In the years since the dominance of the Cutlass, the sport utility has supplanted the wagon and the four-door sedan has taken on the fastback profile that was once the domain of coupes. Drivers no longer wanted to deal with the hassle of getting in and out of the back seat without dedicated portals.
I had the opportunity to sample an Accord coupe for a days during a recent business trip to Southern California and I can definitely see an ongoing place for this car in the automotive landscape although it’s not for everyone.
Both the two and four-door Accords got a mid-cycle refresh last fall that brought new front and rear fascias with revised lighting and some interior updates. The current-generation Accord is arguably the best looking of the type for some time and coupe offers a distinctly different profile from its four-door sibling. From the A-pillar back the two cars share no sheet metal and in addition to the two doors, the coupe loses two-inches less of wheelbase, three-inches of overall length and an inch of height.
The result is a decidedly more athletic stance although it comes at a price in interior space. The driver and front passenger won’t notice any significant difference but rear seat companions will find the accommodations more akin to Spirit airlines than Emirates. But honestly, who cares? If you regularly shuttle more than your mate, you’ll probably opt for the sedan. This is for those that want a reasonably stylish car that doesn’t feel cramped and that have no need or interest in a utility.
The Accord is one of the last mainstream midsizers you can buy in America with a manual gearbox and hopefully Honda will continue this tradition. Remarkably, Honda even offers the manual with either the base 2.4-liter four-cylinder or the optional 3.5-liter V6. The only other manual midsize car, the Mazda6 is only available with four-cylinder engines. Unfortunately, the top-level Accord Touring that I drove is only available with a six-speed automatic with paddle shifters. If you want to use one of Honda’s slick-shifting manuals, you’ll have to step down one grade the EX-L.
Fortunately, for a car with a relatively sporting appearance the V6 offers plenty of motivation to back it up. With 278-horsepower and 252 lb.-ft. Unlike smaller Hondas including the Civic and Fit which now rely on CVTs for those that don’t want to operate three pedals, the Accord still gets a more traditional six-speed automatic. The power delivery was progressive and shifts were seamless.
As I’ve come to expect from Honda cars over the years, the seats were excellent and supportive even though I didn’t get an opportunity to hit any curvy roads during my drive time. The 2016 upgrades brought a new audio system with a seven-inch touchscreen and support for Android Auto and Apple Carplay. While the display itself was good and worked well when viewed through polarized sunglasses, like other recent Hondas it has capacitive touch controls for volume along the left edge. Thankfully the Accord also has a physical volume control on the steering wheel but I always prefer twisting a rotary knob.
The presence of Android Auto support is always a good thing, especially when I’m in an unfamiliar location. Google’s voice recognition is near natural language, especially when asking the system to navigate to location, which can be accomplished in a single command rather than going through menus on embedded systems. Like other Accords of recent years, this one has a secondary non-touch central display above the touchscreen and set further back.
Like the Android Auto implementation in the new Civic, the Accord mirrors Google’s navigation prompts. But instead of doing so in the instrument cluster like the Civic, they appear in that second central display which is much less useful. Nonetheless the traffic information and rerouting capabilities of Google maps proved very useful, especially with the robust voice control available.
The Touring trim level includes the Honda Sensing package as standard equipment a lane keeping system, adaptive cruise control (ACC) and the Honda Lane Watch system. The latter uses a camera on the underside of the passenger side mirror to project the view of what is in the right-side blindspot to the central display. I personally find this less useful than radar-based blindspot monitors used by other manufacturers but it’s better than nothing.
Over the years since I first tried ACC nearly a decade ago, I’ve come to really appreciate the ability to automatically maintain a gap to the vehicle ahead when driving in traffic. Driving around on Los Angeles-area freeways is an ideal application for ACC, or at least it would be if the system could bring the car to a complete stop and then restart as the system in the Civic does. Unfortunately, the Accord still has an older generation of ACC that only operates down to 20 mph and then disengages, severely limiting its usefulness on the 405 during rush hour.
Despite my quibbles with the lack of low speed capability of the ACC and mirroring the navigation prompts directly above the main central display, I really enjoyed my time with the Accord coupe. This more than just a sedan with two longer doors, it actually has a unique style that also has a family resemblance to its little brother, the Civic coupe. Personally, I’d probably skip the Touring and get the EX-L with manual gearbox, but I’m one of those oddballs that still likes to shift for myself. The coupe only accounts for about five percent of Accord sales, but when you’re talking about five percent of nearly 360,000 in 2015, that’s still a pretty respectable number. The 2016 Accord coupe starts at just over $24,000 and a pretty much loaded Touring like the one I drove runs just over $35,000 delivered.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/09/01/2016-honda-accord-coupe-touring-last-of-the-midsize-coupes/
2016-09-01T12:10:00+00:00