I'm the owner of a 2008 Accord sedan with the EX-L trim, navigation, and V6 engine fitted. This was the top-of-the-line Accord back in 2008. I inherited it from a family member who no longer drives. I've had it for a few months and put several thousand miles on it, and I've come to the conclusion that it's the absolute worst vehicle I've ever operated.
The Accord is supposed to be a sensible, quiet, comfortable, reliable family sedan with a bit of sporty driving dynamics. But it isn't. It isn't anywhere close.
My car is painted whatever Honda calls their off-white color and currently has about 41,700 miles. The interior is tan leather, except the steering wheel, which is black for some reason, and the dashboard, which is grey.
I've broken down the car's faults into categories for easy navigation.
Styling
To my eyes, Japanese cars have never really been particularly attractive. Of course, there are exceptions. There's the second-generation Tacoma, the EM1 Civic Si, the original NSX, the 2004-2008 TL, the G35, the IS300, the Mk4 Supra, and many more. But there are also a quite a few abominations from the other side of the Pacific. Springing immediately to mind are the current Lexus RX (or rather all current Lexuses), the recently redesigned Prius, the Crosstour, the QX56, and particularly the current Acura lineup, with those hateful beaks.
This generation Accord, however, falls into neither of those two categories because, plainly, it looks like a Chinese copy of a BMW E60 5-Series. The resemblance is particularly evident when you view the cars from the side. They have the same pointy tail lights, the same rear window kink, the same headlamp lines.
And then the designers forgot to stop styling it. For the car's mid-cycle refresh around 2011, the trunk was given additional tail lights, but why? Tail lights that go across the entire back of the car are for Dodge Challengers and the 1990s. And why is there a a crease across the doors?
It gets worse. To distinguish the posh EX-L version as a cut above its pedestrian cloth-upholstered LX counterpart, Honda has added more chrome than you'd find on the front of a 1950's Buick. American and Japanese carmakers love to do this. The more chrome a car has, the more luxurious and expensive it appears. Or so they think. There's a reason the prestigious European luxury car marques don't douse their flagships in chrome. It doesn't appear luxurious. It's tacky and it's ugly and the color-matched door handles on the cheaper trims look far better.
There's a lot going on here, but the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. The end result is a car that looks as anonymous as a 1998 Hyundai Accent.
Interior
Honda were onto something with this car, as they seem to have been the first automaker to build a sedan with seats made from concrete. I would rather do a road trip in the back of an Access cab Tacoma than in the seats of this car, and I'm six feet tall. They're rock hard and have far too much lumbar support, which I can't adjust because the mechanism has broken in this 41k mile Honda.
The materials don't feel terrific either. The gear lever is exactly the same as the one you'll find in a base Honda Civic, and the surrounding trim has come off. The "wood" trim is laughable; you can find better quality plastics containing Happy Meal toys. On a 30k car the interior fit and finish is unacceptable. If this were a 2002 Chevrolet Impala on a Hertz lot, these faults would be forgiven, but this is a top-of-the-range Honda.
Then there's the color scheme. Why does a car with a tan vinyl (read: leather) interior and brown plastic (read: wood) trim have a black steering wheel, a grey dashboard, and a black center console area? The answer to that is very simple: money. Honda's cost cutting means all eighth-generation Accords, regardless of interior, were fitted with a black steering wheel. It's as out of place as an V8 engine in an S2000.
Preparing To Drive It
Before you drive a car, you need to adjust the seat into a proper driving position, which means most cars come with seats than can be adjusted in many different directions. The Accord's driver's seat, however, cannot be put into what I consider a comfortable driving position.
I'm six feet tall with quite long legs (34" inseam) for my height, and I like to drive with my legs nearly completely straight. Unfortunately, despite the enormity of the eighth-generation Accord (this body style moved the car's classification from mid-size to full-size), with the seat pushed all the way back my legs are bent at an angle of about sixty degrees and must be spread apart. And that's not the end. Because my legs are so bent, my knee makes contact with the steering wheel when I move my right foot to the brake pedal. Raising the steering wheel out of reach of my legs blocks my field of vision.
And it gets worse. I experience these issues with the driving position even when I sit bolt-upright in the seat, which I can do for about thirty seconds before asking the ancient navigation system to direct me to the nearest chiropractor. I'm 21 years old and I've developed back problems from these seats.
To fix this problem, I often slouch, which pushes my knees even further against the dashboard and steering wheel, but at least temporarily removes the wretched lumbar support from my back. This, however, creates another problem. Because I have slouched, my head is lowered, so I can no longer see over the car's stratospheric belt line. Which means I can't change lanes or turn or reverse or park. Which means I can't really drive the car on the road.
Driving Experience
If you are like my father and actually quite like the seats and driving position, I'm afraid all is still not well when you're behind the wheel.
Those who abandoned their New Year's resolution of going to the gym more often on the second of January will be challenged by the car's rather heavy steering, which makes it a chore to park or turn at low speeds. This, however, does not mean that the steering is direct, fast, or communicative in any way, because it is not. You only know what the front wheels are doing when you hear the tires going over the bumps on the lane-dividing lines.
And you will hear yourself going over those bumps. That's because this car has been fitted with less noise insulation than a bed sheet. Particularly on bad roads at freeway speeds it is inexcusable. You have to raise your voice to have a conversation, or use one of the fifteen thousand knobs and buttons on the center stack to raise the volume of your music to drown out the noise. It's absolutely unbearable.
If you're hard of hearing and would like to know when you run over bumps, I have some good news, because Honda has thought of that too. The ride in this car is dreadful. You feel every single thing you run over, even if it's a one-celled organism. The suspension feels it was made from cinder blocks. Which, given the cost-cutting measures evident in the interior, it probably was.
At this point, you might be noticing a trend. Rough ride. Lots of road noise. Hard suspension. Uncomfortable seats. Heavy steering. You're probably thinking this is a sports car. A Ferrari 360 Challenge with a rear seat and five-star safety rating (hey, a redeeming feature!). But you'd be wrong, because this car is about as engaging to drive as one of those four-wheeled surrey bicycles overweight families like to rent and pedal down the footpath next to the beach.
It's got a 3.5 liter V6 which develops something like 270 horsepower, which sounds promising, but it's ruined by being sent to the wrong wheels through the most annoying transmission I've experienced this side of a CVT. It's a five-speed auto, but it will NOT use first gear unless told to, even in parking lots. You also can't cap the upshifts in fourth, which would come in handy down freeway hills. It refuses to downshift under hard acceleration, so you're never in the top of the power band, which kind of ruins the point of VTEC.
Then there's the brakes, which needed to be replaced after 37k miles. The Honda dealer told me this was normal; my independent mechanic found it ridiculous. Even though they're brand new, I think they're made from quarters. Or dimes. They're not up to the task of stopping a car this heavy and there's absolutely no feel.
And because you can't stop, you'll find yourself coming up to a corner much too quickly and you'll need a way to get around. So you turn the steering wheel. And nothing happens. You keep going straight. And that's because the understeer from which this car suffers is catastrophic. Take a turn three miles an hour faster than you should and you plow straight into oncoming traffic. That's the trouble with sending 270 bhp to the front wheels of a full-size car. It doesn't turn, except for when you floor the accelerator and fight the torque steer.
So to solve the problem you drive the car more slowly, which, unfortunately, means you're in it for longer. The uber-invasive lumbar support has ruined your spine, so you get your day's exercise by turning the steering wheel to negotiate the behemoth into a parking space. This will be especially difficult because you can't see anything around you because of the high beltline and raked stance. And then you try to get out, but you're trapped, because you can't figure out the interior door locks, which work the opposite way that the door locks in every single other car in the universe work. And then you get out and push the lock button forty-five times on your key fob before it finally responds and sounds the horn. Which startles you because you're standing directly in front of the car.
And then you turn around (if your back isn't too pained to do so) and remind yourself that you've been driving something that looks like a Chinese ripoff of the BMW 5-Series design, which, by the way, was released four years earlier. And you notice it's awfully quiet because you've been removed from all the road noise. You can straighten your legs. You're no longer surrounded by clashing shades of grey, black, and tan.
And you wonder to yourself:
How on earth is this one of the United States's best-selling cars?
The Accord is supposed to be a sensible, quiet, comfortable, reliable family sedan with a bit of sporty driving dynamics. But it isn't. It isn't anywhere close.
My car is painted whatever Honda calls their off-white color and currently has about 41,700 miles. The interior is tan leather, except the steering wheel, which is black for some reason, and the dashboard, which is grey.
I've broken down the car's faults into categories for easy navigation.
Styling
To my eyes, Japanese cars have never really been particularly attractive. Of course, there are exceptions. There's the second-generation Tacoma, the EM1 Civic Si, the original NSX, the 2004-2008 TL, the G35, the IS300, the Mk4 Supra, and many more. But there are also a quite a few abominations from the other side of the Pacific. Springing immediately to mind are the current Lexus RX (or rather all current Lexuses), the recently redesigned Prius, the Crosstour, the QX56, and particularly the current Acura lineup, with those hateful beaks.
This generation Accord, however, falls into neither of those two categories because, plainly, it looks like a Chinese copy of a BMW E60 5-Series. The resemblance is particularly evident when you view the cars from the side. They have the same pointy tail lights, the same rear window kink, the same headlamp lines.
And then the designers forgot to stop styling it. For the car's mid-cycle refresh around 2011, the trunk was given additional tail lights, but why? Tail lights that go across the entire back of the car are for Dodge Challengers and the 1990s. And why is there a a crease across the doors?
It gets worse. To distinguish the posh EX-L version as a cut above its pedestrian cloth-upholstered LX counterpart, Honda has added more chrome than you'd find on the front of a 1950's Buick. American and Japanese carmakers love to do this. The more chrome a car has, the more luxurious and expensive it appears. Or so they think. There's a reason the prestigious European luxury car marques don't douse their flagships in chrome. It doesn't appear luxurious. It's tacky and it's ugly and the color-matched door handles on the cheaper trims look far better.
There's a lot going on here, but the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. The end result is a car that looks as anonymous as a 1998 Hyundai Accent.
Interior
Honda were onto something with this car, as they seem to have been the first automaker to build a sedan with seats made from concrete. I would rather do a road trip in the back of an Access cab Tacoma than in the seats of this car, and I'm six feet tall. They're rock hard and have far too much lumbar support, which I can't adjust because the mechanism has broken in this 41k mile Honda.
The materials don't feel terrific either. The gear lever is exactly the same as the one you'll find in a base Honda Civic, and the surrounding trim has come off. The "wood" trim is laughable; you can find better quality plastics containing Happy Meal toys. On a 30k car the interior fit and finish is unacceptable. If this were a 2002 Chevrolet Impala on a Hertz lot, these faults would be forgiven, but this is a top-of-the-range Honda.
Then there's the color scheme. Why does a car with a tan vinyl (read: leather) interior and brown plastic (read: wood) trim have a black steering wheel, a grey dashboard, and a black center console area? The answer to that is very simple: money. Honda's cost cutting means all eighth-generation Accords, regardless of interior, were fitted with a black steering wheel. It's as out of place as an V8 engine in an S2000.
Preparing To Drive It
Before you drive a car, you need to adjust the seat into a proper driving position, which means most cars come with seats than can be adjusted in many different directions. The Accord's driver's seat, however, cannot be put into what I consider a comfortable driving position.
I'm six feet tall with quite long legs (34" inseam) for my height, and I like to drive with my legs nearly completely straight. Unfortunately, despite the enormity of the eighth-generation Accord (this body style moved the car's classification from mid-size to full-size), with the seat pushed all the way back my legs are bent at an angle of about sixty degrees and must be spread apart. And that's not the end. Because my legs are so bent, my knee makes contact with the steering wheel when I move my right foot to the brake pedal. Raising the steering wheel out of reach of my legs blocks my field of vision.
And it gets worse. I experience these issues with the driving position even when I sit bolt-upright in the seat, which I can do for about thirty seconds before asking the ancient navigation system to direct me to the nearest chiropractor. I'm 21 years old and I've developed back problems from these seats.
To fix this problem, I often slouch, which pushes my knees even further against the dashboard and steering wheel, but at least temporarily removes the wretched lumbar support from my back. This, however, creates another problem. Because I have slouched, my head is lowered, so I can no longer see over the car's stratospheric belt line. Which means I can't change lanes or turn or reverse or park. Which means I can't really drive the car on the road.
Driving Experience
If you are like my father and actually quite like the seats and driving position, I'm afraid all is still not well when you're behind the wheel.
Those who abandoned their New Year's resolution of going to the gym more often on the second of January will be challenged by the car's rather heavy steering, which makes it a chore to park or turn at low speeds. This, however, does not mean that the steering is direct, fast, or communicative in any way, because it is not. You only know what the front wheels are doing when you hear the tires going over the bumps on the lane-dividing lines.
And you will hear yourself going over those bumps. That's because this car has been fitted with less noise insulation than a bed sheet. Particularly on bad roads at freeway speeds it is inexcusable. You have to raise your voice to have a conversation, or use one of the fifteen thousand knobs and buttons on the center stack to raise the volume of your music to drown out the noise. It's absolutely unbearable.
If you're hard of hearing and would like to know when you run over bumps, I have some good news, because Honda has thought of that too. The ride in this car is dreadful. You feel every single thing you run over, even if it's a one-celled organism. The suspension feels it was made from cinder blocks. Which, given the cost-cutting measures evident in the interior, it probably was.
At this point, you might be noticing a trend. Rough ride. Lots of road noise. Hard suspension. Uncomfortable seats. Heavy steering. You're probably thinking this is a sports car. A Ferrari 360 Challenge with a rear seat and five-star safety rating (hey, a redeeming feature!). But you'd be wrong, because this car is about as engaging to drive as one of those four-wheeled surrey bicycles overweight families like to rent and pedal down the footpath next to the beach.
It's got a 3.5 liter V6 which develops something like 270 horsepower, which sounds promising, but it's ruined by being sent to the wrong wheels through the most annoying transmission I've experienced this side of a CVT. It's a five-speed auto, but it will NOT use first gear unless told to, even in parking lots. You also can't cap the upshifts in fourth, which would come in handy down freeway hills. It refuses to downshift under hard acceleration, so you're never in the top of the power band, which kind of ruins the point of VTEC.
Then there's the brakes, which needed to be replaced after 37k miles. The Honda dealer told me this was normal; my independent mechanic found it ridiculous. Even though they're brand new, I think they're made from quarters. Or dimes. They're not up to the task of stopping a car this heavy and there's absolutely no feel.
And because you can't stop, you'll find yourself coming up to a corner much too quickly and you'll need a way to get around. So you turn the steering wheel. And nothing happens. You keep going straight. And that's because the understeer from which this car suffers is catastrophic. Take a turn three miles an hour faster than you should and you plow straight into oncoming traffic. That's the trouble with sending 270 bhp to the front wheels of a full-size car. It doesn't turn, except for when you floor the accelerator and fight the torque steer.
So to solve the problem you drive the car more slowly, which, unfortunately, means you're in it for longer. The uber-invasive lumbar support has ruined your spine, so you get your day's exercise by turning the steering wheel to negotiate the behemoth into a parking space. This will be especially difficult because you can't see anything around you because of the high beltline and raked stance. And then you try to get out, but you're trapped, because you can't figure out the interior door locks, which work the opposite way that the door locks in every single other car in the universe work. And then you get out and push the lock button forty-five times on your key fob before it finally responds and sounds the horn. Which startles you because you're standing directly in front of the car.
And then you turn around (if your back isn't too pained to do so) and remind yourself that you've been driving something that looks like a Chinese ripoff of the BMW 5-Series design, which, by the way, was released four years earlier. And you notice it's awfully quiet because you've been removed from all the road noise. You can straighten your legs. You're no longer surrounded by clashing shades of grey, black, and tan.
And you wonder to yourself:
How on earth is this one of the United States's best-selling cars?
PSH...please.
