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In connection with the replacement of the bulbs, we wanted to do the change ourselves, since we’re the hands-on type of car buffs. However, because of the complexity of the fog light assembly, we were perplexed on how to deal with this. We gave Honda Cars Marikina a ring to ask how to open up the fog light casing. We got a surprising reply that’s a bitter blow to all hands-on Honda car buyers. Their service manager refused to give the instructions on how to open the fog light casing, because in doing so, he feared that they’d lose the importance of their Honda training and hence, they could get fired. What?! Get fired over how to open the fog light casing? This horror story of Honda not wanting to give out details on how to do things yourself extend to buying extra light bulbs and screws. They never want to give out the model numbers of any of the genuine Honda parts. Although this is definitely a company policy, shouldn’t the customers have the right to choose to buy the part elsewhere? Back to the fog light question, we ended inviting over another fellow car buff and after fiddling around for fifteen minutes, we got to replace the bulbs. Does this mean we could fire the Honda Cars Marikina service manager and take his place? We hope so. We’ve managed to add a new Alpine 6-disc CD changer that has been fitted underneath the front passenger seat courtesy of Perfect Circle, the official distributor of Alpine products in the Philippines (according to the Alpine website). This is to compliment the obviously lacking 3-disc in-dash CD changer standard in all 1998-2001 Accord VTi-L models. At this point, we should be praising the sound quality of the Accord’s standard 60-watts 6-speaker system, but we can’t. It seems that after the 35,000 kilometers check-up, the Accord was returned to us with damaged front speakers, causing the sound to break up at the heavy bass levels. What makes it worse is that Honda Quezon Avenue personnel seemed to be main culprit as the ‘source’ has been moved from tuner to radio. It seemed that they couldn’t resist listening to a track or two of Aiza Siguerra while changing the Accord’s oil. The same could be true with the leather seats, which have been transformed to doodling pads by the service people. In terms of driver excitement, the Accord is typically docile, but it can give out some degree of cornering entertainment courtesy of its double-wishbone and multi-link suspension set-up. It is perfectly agile (for its size) on open highways and compliant in traffic maneuvers. However, the biggest irritant of our long-termer is the fact that understeer dominates each and every time you drive it. In combination with a softly sprung suspension, this Honda is sometimes terrifying on the twisty mountain roads and sharp-turn flyovers. |
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