The Honda Accord is nothing to look at—it’s a Japanese car for Pete’s sake.  The nicely chiseled body resembles the previous generation Accord; only the design has been cleaned up and evolutionized to produce this new shape.  At some angles, the Accord can easily be mistaken for its smaller brethren, the Civic and City.  Blame the lack of originality of the Honda stylists—but no matter, it looks good, albeit a bit bland.  Of course, placing the Accord near the other similar Japanese sedans: Nissan Cefiro, Toyota Camry and the Mitsubishi Galant, the Accord is among the prettiest there is, losing only to the aggressively styled Galant. 

This Accord is an all-new unit that differentiates itself from the old unit in many aspects, the biggest of which has to do with the suspension set-up.  The current Honda Accord uses a double wishbone / multi-link suspension set-up, compared to the front and rear double wishbone of the Accords of yesteryear.  Of course, this new suspension set-up has produced remarkable improvements to the car’s ride.  More than ever, the Accord feels safer since the car tends to wobble less and the ride is firmer.  It absorbs all sorts of bumps with ease as well—cocooning the driver in a calm and tranquil environment.

Unfortunately, the buzzy 2.3-liter SOHC VTEC inline-4 unit mars the peace. Think Honda Civic and enlarge it to a displacement of 2.3-liters—that’s now the engine noise is undifferentiated within the SOHC VTEC engine range. The engine, although quite at idling, tends to hum in the background at 2000-3000 rpm and grunts when the second stage VTEC engages at around 4000 rpm.  Thankfully enough, the scruffiness of the VTEC engagement is followed by a sudden serge of power all the way to its 6500 rpm red-line.  In fact, the VTEC unit is rev-happy, a trait it shares with the more sophisticated BMW inline-6 unit.  The power band isn’t that wide, but once you find the proper gearing and punch the accelerator, the Accord can be propelled to speeds in excess of 190 km/h.