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One of the first cars I learned to drive on was my family’s fifth-generation, 1996 Honda Accord. It might be one of the most generically-designed cars you could imagine, but it was fantastic regardless. It was safe. Comfortable. Durable. Deceivingly fun, too — its chassis was nimble and its quick-revving four-cylinder was as energetic and eager to please as a Labrador Retriever. It was not a fast car, but it was so overwhelmingly competent you couldn’t help but fall in love with it. And many people did — ’80s and ’90s Hondas turned many Americans into brand loyalists.
Decades later, many enthusiasts have bemoaned that Hondas of the last few years lack that certain something that made early Hondas so special. In 2016, just a year into his tenure, Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo agreed: “Over the years, our product development process became overly complex and slow, involving a huge number of engineers and sales and marketing people,” Hachigo told Reuters. “We began producing watered down, uninspiring…designed-by-committee, cars.” Hachigo’s objective has been redistributing more power to engineers in hopes of building a more captivating product. The new Civic Type-R has been promising — even the standard Civic received glowing reviews when the tenth generation debuted in late 2015.
Now, Honda’s brought out the tenth generation of the Honda Accord, and it seems Hachigo continues to keep his word. The new Accord is fully redesigned, and bestowed with a fastback silhouette and turbocharged engines — a 1.4-liter turbo four as a base and a 2.0-liter turbo four usurping the old 3.5-liter V6. Both are available with 6-speed manual transmissions, a decidedly not-lame decision for Honda to make in a marketplace that continues to edge out the enthusiast’s choice of gearbox.
That 2.0-liter (equipped in my test car) has been hyped a lot lately as a “de-tuned” version of the engine inside the beastly Civic Type-R, and while mechanically there are some significant differences between the two (including a different turbo and pistons), fundamentally it’s the same engine underneath. Power output is 252 horsepower and 273 lb-ft of torque, slightly less than the old V6, but the new Accord is lighter and, when mated with the 10-speed equipped in my test car, 60 miles per hour comes from a standstill in 5.5 seconds (this is according to a test by Car & Driver).
2018 Honda Accord 2.0T Specs
