*tires accordingly screeching*
It's the Japanese sedan your 10th grade poly-sci teacher drove, and even though you didn't do the reading,
and you didn't contribute to the class discussion, he still gave you a B.
This car went from light pony,
to VTEC-
BAAAAHHH!!!!!
Brony!
*revving*
All the while being on the Car and Driver 10 Best list more than any other car in history!
This is everything you need to know to get up to speed on the Honda Accord.
*fun intro music*
A big thank you to Honda for sponsoring this episode of Up to Speed.
They lent us a brand new Honda Accord, and
they gave my son Nolan a ride in a freaking two-seat Indycar.
*Indycar with James Pumphrey's son in the back seat*
And I promise in this episode I will show you a video of Nolan screaming in the back of an open-wheel race car.
(and he did)
But for now, back to the show!
*tires civically screeching*
In 1972, Honda launched the Civic. You might've heard of it.
The Civic sold really well in the US market thanks to its reliability, low price, and great fuel economy.
But the little commuter had some drawbacks.
It was small and simple, and lacked the features that American drivers had come to expect,
like features. (Err... kay.)
So in 1976 Honda debuted a bigger, fancier companion car.
They say the nameplate stands for Honda's desire for accord and harmony between two people, society and the automobile.
In order to achieve that accord and harmony,
the first Accord was a compact $4,000 2-door FWD hatchback
powered by Honda's 2nd generation 68 hp 1.6L CVCC 4-cylinder engine that came-
*inhalation*
with a bunch of standard features like cloth seats, a tachometer, intermittent wipers, AM/FM radio,
a rear window wiper/defroster, a remote rear hatch release
because true harmony means easy access to all that junk!
All that junk,
inside your trunk!
While the car was well received, it looked a little too much like the competition for some people.
- Y'ALL!
DID YOU GUYS JUST TRACE A PICTURE OF THE SCIROCCO AND CALL IT A DAY?!
- Nah, I love pony cars so much I wanted the first version to be a two-door.
Don't even worry about it, dude.
For the '79 model year, Honda released a four-door sedan version of the Accord.
It had an upgraded 1.8L 72 hrspr engine
and sweet, sweet luxury options like power steering and ice cold AC.
Of course, these features are commonplace today,
but they proved to be a huge deal to consumers in the late 70s,
because American manufacturers didn't offer these things in any of their sub-2L efficient models.
In the first year of Accord production, Honda sold 18,000 cars in the US.
But Honda wanted more.
Fortunately for them, and only them,
the Iranian revolution of 1979 caused oil prices to skyrocket globally,
bringing about a Japanese revolution in America.
People ditched their big gas guzzlers and went for more fuel-efficient options.
By the end of the first generation...
Honda sold over 200,000 Accords.
ahrhight?
I haven't seen a more successful first generation since Abraham in the Old Testament.
*o yeh*
The Accord became so popular in America
that Honda needed to build a new factory just to keep up with demand.
In 1982, Honda opened a manufacturing plant in Marysville, Ohio.
SHOUTOUT TO THOSE MARYSVILLE MONARCHS!
You guys are gonna SMASH Dublin Coffman in that season opener on October 4!
Honda was the first Japanese automaker to ever build cars in the US.
That's more harmony.
That's world harmony,
bábỳ.
*the accordant voice of an angel*
**so beautiful**
o mye gawd
hes lyk an anjel
The second gen Accord was everything that made the first gen great, and even more.
The completely redesigned Accord was bigger than its predecessor,
and available with a 4-speed automatic, and could be had with shag carpet and velour upholstery,
which makes driving naked feel so much better.
*new Accord yeah*
In 1983, they upped the standard hrsprs from 72 to 86, and in '85, ten years before Post Malone was born,
they released the SE-i, which increased hrsprs to a whopping 101 Japanese wagyu ponies!
*the sound of 101 wagyupower*
The second gen was so awesome that Car and Driver put it on their very first 10 Best Cars list in 1983,
where it would go on to be the winningest car in the award's history.
While Honda seemed to have the Accord fully dialed in, competition got fierce,
when Soichiro Toyoda launched the-
TOYOTA
Camry in 1982.
Soichiro Honda was like:
- This Soichiro from a different Kiichiro
{that's his dad's name, my son Nolan}
is trying to move in on our turf?
Boys, it's time to call in...
...the big guns.
Honda enlisted the help of designer Toshi Oshika
Toshi gave the new third gen Accord a sporty, blade-like design that featured......
POP UP UP AND DOWN HEADLIIIIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!1!!1!1
POP UP UP AND DOWN HEADLIGHTS UH!
Unfortunately/actually fortunately, the low-slung design didn't leave room for traditional MacPherson suspension
so the only solution was to install more expensive double wishbone at all four corners.
This is the same kind of suspension that Honda's NSX used.
Suspension
inspired
by the Formula 1 cars
Honda
was powering
with their engines
in the mid-80s!
*wishbones baby*
And since the Accord came out four years before the NSX, it could be argued
that the Accord is more of a race car than the NSX!
Now I'm not saying that one could win that argument, but I digress.
The double wishbone suspension made the third gen Accord one of the best handling sedans in Japan,
if not the world, at the time.
That's the powah of wishbones, baby!
- Make a wish!
- I wish my car was one of the best handling sedans in the world!
- GRANTED!
By 1989, the Accord was printing money for Honda.
They had sold nearly 3 million cars since its debut.
America couldn't get enough of the humble Honda, and it hadn't even reached its final form yet!
So when Honda released the fourth gen for the 1990 model year, they decided to go big or go home.
Literally.
They added 4.7 inches to the wheelbase.
The increase in size bumped the Accord up to a mid-size classification and gave birth to the first Accord wagon.
Who are Honda fanboys gonna love?
*fart*
Who looks great slammed on bags?
You!
You do!
The fifth gen came out in 1994 and featured a truly special engine in Honda lore:
a 2.2L 4-cylinder beastie boy
with Variable Valve Timing and Lift Electronic Control technology
also known as...
Ooooo...-
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
V-TEC! (BAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH)
The H-Series V-TEC, which you can learn about here,
gave the Accord great fuel efficiency at low RPM and better performance at high RPM.
The special camshaft and valves almost made it feel like you had two engines under the hood of your car.
The fifth gen also introduced a 2.7L V6 to the lineup for the first time.
It put out a respectable 170 hrsprs.
The more powerful V6 engine and high-revving V-TEC 4-banger
UUGGHH the H22 my dude!
IN AN EG?!?!
*it's time for host note time*
There was an orange one running around Lowelville when I was in high school.
It was like one of my favorite cars.
Engines like the H22 helped bolster Honda's image as a performance brand.
And that is why this era is known as the golden age of Hondas.
*HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*
(that means H22)
Then came the sixth gen Accord in 1998.
Europe saw the introduction of the lightweight, super awesome, 217 hrspr Accord Type-R,
which we didn't get but I'll talk about anyway.
Like the Civic Type-R of the time, Honda basically stripped out an Accord's interior,
stiffened up the chassis, made the brakes better, and tuned the suspension for the twisties.
Under the hood was a red-top 2.2L V-TEC engine which revved to an insane 8,800 RPM!
*Accord Type-R glory*
You know what I'm talkin about.
i do!
may i?
Go ahead.
(insert double "BAAAH" here, cuz the subtitle could cover the entire screen)
thank u
But at last, us Americans have denied this sweet,
sweet ride!
*beautiful V-TEC Americans will never hear*
Back over here, the sixth gen American Accord mainly focused on safety, environmental improvements,
and getting bigger.
Kinda like me now that I'm in my thirties.
And as Americans got bigger, so did the most popular car in the country.
To handle the ever-expanding girth of the Accord,
the seventh gen marked the debut of the K-series 4-cylinder engines in 2002.
I love the H22, but if I bought a Honda, it would get a K-swap.
*K-series*
The base model Accord jumped from 135 to 160 hrsprs.
Honda also offered an improved V6 that punched out 240 hrsprs, and could be paired with a 6-speed manual.
A few years later marked the debut of the thi¢¢est Accords ever made,
the eighth gen/ninth gen Accords from 2008-2017.
I'm putting them together because they are very similar and life is too short.
This behemoth was SO BIG that the sedan was officially classified by the EPA as large.
It was 10 inches longer and 3 inches wider than the previous gen,
and an astounding 20 inches longer and 11 inches wider than the first gen Accord.
Cars get bigger; it's life.
But just because the eighth and ninth gen Accords had to shop in the husky boys' section,
that didn't mean that they were bad.
No frickin way!
As my boy Soichiro says, "no frickin way!"
They had 120 cubic feet of interior space.
That's as big as an SUV!
And despite being considerably bigger, they were only a few pounds heavier than the previous generation.
Which brings us to the current 10th gen of the Honda Accord.
The car debuted with the 2018 model and was a complete redesign.
For the first time in Accord's long history, they actually made the car smaller than the previous generations.
They made the car almost 3 inches shorter in length while adding a half inch of width.
Them's good proportions!
And about that engine.
Honda went the cheeky route
AND PUT THE FRICKIN TYPE-R ENGINE UNDER THE HOOD!
I'm talkin V-TEC baby!
Turbocharged V-TEC!
That's like V-TEC times two, kind of!
Okay, it's not the same engine as the Type-R, it's got a smaller turbo and a less aggressive cam, but it's still 2L.
It still makes over 250 hrsprs, and you can still get it with a stick!
Do you know how many Audis you can get with a stick shift right now?
Zero.
As you might have picked up on, Honda loves racing.
In fact, Honda founder himself once said that "without racing, there is no Honda".
Well that still holds true today.
Honda is deep in the Indycar game supplying twin-turbocharged 750 hp V6s (WTF?!)
to some of the best teams in the country.
And guess what?
The Accord is in on it too. You can see a souped up Accord pace car lead the pack around the track
at Indycar races all over the country.
And if you want to ride in one, they built one for you to ride in!
It's the fastest seat in motorsports.
You can ride
in the back
of an Indycar
around a real race track!
*James's son Nolan takes off*
Congrats, you've watched until the end.
For your service, you shall be rewarded with some sweet sweet footage
of Nolan driving around the streets of Long Beach in the back of an Indycar.
- All right, we're on pit road.
I'm nervous.
Can't walk!
That was some of the most fun I have ever had in a race car and I wasn't even driving.
Such an honor to ride with Mario Andretti.
I still can't even believe it. I'm gonna be having dreams about this for years.
Thanks for watching Donut, man,
I'm just so stoked you're watching it!
If you do not wanna miss any of it, hit that subscribe button,
if you liked it, let us know by hitting the like button,
follow me on Instagram at james_pumphrey,
follow Donut at donut_media,
watch this episode of Up To Speed, watch this episode of WheelHouse,
we got new shows comin' ALL THE TIME (watever he said)!
I love you.