Road Test
Here's how we imagine that Honda's product planners laid out the design brief for the 2003 Accord: "Well, folks, our Accord is winning comparison tests and selling as fast as we can make it, but we're going to have to replace it anyway in a few years. Trouble is, it's already big enough, so this time we can't just reflexively add inches like we did in the last five redos. Instead, try this: Make it passionate. Make it emotional. You know, transform our Mr. Spock into Bones or Scotty. Woo the right brains of all those illogical artists and enthusiasts who are currently eyeballing VW Passats and Nissan Altimas!"
We're convinced this was the scenario, because the words "emotion," "passion," and even "cheetahlike styling" are peppered throughout the press bumf. The swoopiest early design sketches even look vaguely cheetahesque (if you squint). Whether it was a language-barrier thing or just the signal degradation that occurs when a message travels down a deep chain of command, the marching orders that were received and acted on by the engineers in the trenches seem to have devolved to: "Make it more good."
It certainly is more good, even in categories where the last Accord seemed to be as good as a car needed to be. Body rigidity, for example, improves 27 percent (in torsion), according to Honda, going from bank-vault to Fort Knox solid. Panel gaps have shrunk to nearly credit-card-slot dimensions. Extensive aerodynamic sculpting has trimmed wind noise around the A-pillars and outside mirrors to barely noticeable levels and endowed the car with an impressive 0.30 drag coefficient, down from 0.33.
Value has always been one of the Accord's core virtues, yet our top-of-the-line EX V-6 test car even advances on this front, adding side-curtain airbags, a tilting and telescoping steering wheel, heated seats, an auto-up-and-down driver's window, dual-zone air conditioning, and a button on the key that can open all the windows to vent a hot interior — all for about the same base price as last year's model, figure $26,000. Dedicated gizmophiles can even opt for Honda's first voice-activated satellite-navigation system, which also allows you to boss around the radio and air conditioner. Stick to the scripted commands it recognizes, and the system works well, even when you affect a Robert De Niro-grade phony southern accent. There's even an optional DVD entertainment system for the back seat.
Pour all those virtues into a comfortable interior that's slightly roomier in most dimensions (force of habit — they made the wheelbase and width bigger again this time around), and you have goodness in spades. But passion? emotion?
Take away the stylists' 25-inch wheels and ultra-low-profile rubber, raise the car to production ride height, and suddenly the cheetah look dissolves into a basic Japan, Inc., sedan with a tail that strikes us as kind of Buicky. The interior, although assembled of superb materials to exacting standards, is no more adventurous. The center console features a chevron shape that could be mistaken for an Acura or Mazda dash. Dodge's Intrepid remains the yardstick against which we measure family sedans for visual oomph.
It was in this understimulated and unemotional state that we took the helm and pointed the '03 Accord toward the same roads over which its predecessors have danced their way onto our 10Best list 16 times.
