When my friend Candra told me months ago, she wanted to replace her 95’ Accord with a new car, she was certain she wanted a new 2009 Accord Coupe, after seeing a coworker get one. I let her read my Epinions review on the Accord and then assured her, she'd definitely enjoy it since she was used to driving such an old car for the past 3 years.

I reviewed the Accord 2008 here http://www.epinions.com/content_403808751236 and while I found it to be a very impressive car (for Honda), I felt that the exterior wasn’t very appealing and that the interior was cluttered with buttons and a non-intuitive computer system. Never-the-less, I forced her to go for every single option. As a technophile, I made it a point to make my demands upon her clear: “you are getting the car fully loaded, with the factory Navigation system” even though she would have saved a couple bucks (around $1500) not getting it.
The Navigation system is packaged with leather seating which means you are automatically upgrading from cloth seats and a radio to the “full Accord treatment” if you are willing to spend the extra bucks.

Why not?

The engine choice is the next major option. two choices of Inline4's or the V6 engine. While sitting in front of the finance manager, I explained to her that she should go for the V6 simply because the 190HP I4, when loaded with her 4 family members would suffer tremendous power reduction. Maybe also because I’m a male, prejudiced against anything I perceive as slow, I demanded she go for the 271HP V6 instead. “It’ll help your trade in value” I said.

The manager, desperate to put a deal together tried to talk her into the I4 while I was unmoved by his appeals to her frugal nature.
He insisted that the 190HP I4 was faster than I believed, giving me the feeling he was determined to sell it to clear out his inventory. He let me test drive both the I4 and the V6 models to my heart’s content. But still, I demanded she go for the V6.

Moma always told me, “don’t save a couple bucks not getting what you really want - after all, you’re going to be paying it off over the next 6 years. You want to enjoy having it and not wishing you’d not been so cheap before."

When all was said and done, and the car loan was set up, we got the car and the salesmen proceeded to tell us everything we needed to know. The Accord for 2008-2009 is chuck loaded with excellent industry standards as well as great optional devices and wrapped in a very appealing package.

Her entire purchase came out to a discounted $30,800 which equals monthly payments of $450 for the 6 year finance period - with just $7000 down and a $65 DMV fee.

If you are on budget, upgrading from an old hooptee and $35,000 is your max for a car, the Honda Accord will make you very happy.

I’m sure she loves it already.




EXTERIOR DESIGN

When designing the Honda Accord Sedan for 2008, they did their best to attack every single reason an American car buyer might have for turning down the Honda Accords of the past. Compared with the 2007 Accord, the 2008/09 model has grown in the rear leg space department, shoulder width and head space. The new Accord sedan also had an exterior design cribbed from BMW’s 5 series with light fixtures that almost seem mistakenly delivered to Japan from Germany. to top it all off, power has been increased to a nice 190HP four banger, or a more miserly 271HP v6. But, what bothered me most of all with the sedan was how cheap its sheetmetal looked. The chrome accents for the handles and windshield frames were stick-ons, and without fog lamps, the front-end looked as bland as a Sarah Palin speech.

NOW WE COME TO THE ACCORD COUPE.

The coupe design of the Honda Accord is probably the best design Honda has ever come up with. The coupe is about 2 inches lower, 4 inches shorter and 31 pounds lighter than the Sedan.

It carries swoopy looks, chiseled door grooves, a very pronounced roofline and sexy rear lighting fixtures that make it almost as attractive as an Italian sports car. I never, ever looked at a Honda like I’ve oogled over the Coupe.

If I never had a reason to like Hondas before, this is the reason to like one.



INTERIOR TECHNOLOGY

The steering wheel of a car and the center stack are the most important parts of a car because they are the two segments that all drivers must constantly come in contact with.

Honda’s steering wheel is excellent. Leather wrapped, about 13 inches - appropriate for the car's turn radius, and has easily accessible buttons for the radio controls and basic navigation tweaks.


The interior centerstack of the Accord is a MESS. As I mentioned in my last review, whether you get the Navigation system or not, the front dashboard is still a cluttered travesty of plastic buttons and they are hard to tell apart without reading them carefully until you have enough practice to perfect your gross motor skills.

The Accord has an “I-drive” knob with a jog dial under it. You press the knob for [Enter], spin the dial for cursor movements, tilt the knob up to select/ok and move the knob side to side or down for other functions. But the strange thing is, there is also a volume knob with a power button in it for the radio above the NAV knob. Neither of these knobs can be used to SEEK - which is instead, handled by a seek button. Did Honda realize that the reason the iDrive was made was to attempt to minimize the number of buttons required?
The knob is set into the centerstack, rather than at the base of the armrest. Its obvious why BMW put it there in the first place - it's easier to control things without having to lift the arms and its easier to manipulate in this natural position than it is to use the left side of your brain trying to remember each direction required to get through the horribly designed menus. Most car companies copying the i-drive get it relatively right, such as; Audi's MMI, Benz's COMMAND, and Hyundai Genesis', but some companies try to do it their way and screw up like Honda and Nissan.

Honda implants an LCD screen high up into the dash so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road while following map directions, but, stupidly, they made a second tier LED display right under the LCD screen which displays the radio channel, the special functions (such as Bluetooth pairing) and system status. It doesn’t make sense to do this. The radio station and the Bluetooth status, among other things, can be neatly included in the LCD screen.
Most other companies do it that way. However, this choice by Honda only makes it that much more obvious that the Graphic User Interface of the car is very sloppy.

For example: the navigation system cannot be used at the same time as the voice-dialing feature for a Bluetooth phone. The steering wheel therefore has two sets of activate/cancel buttons in order to input voice commands. If you enter voice dial mode, voice navigation command turns off and vice versa. Unfortunately, you must hit the voice command button for the function you want for each and every single command. It becomes tremendously easier to manually enter street addresses. Ford's new SYNC system is much better.

Voice dialing and speech activation is encouraged because the system does not lock itself even when the vehicle is at high speeds and you can’t safely enter navi information while you are at high speeds. However, the voice functions are so finicky (you don’t train your voice for it), that the car misunderstands 80% of what you say.
And the car's misinterpretation of your command really becomes annoying since wrong commands can cause the temperature controls to change to an undesired setting.

Until APPLE designs an I-drive, car manufacturers are just going to keep screwing it up.

I was also surprised to find out that Candra’s car had heated seats. I was glad to find this, but why oh why does Honda use a rocker switch that doesn’t have spring tension? You push the rocker left for “low” and right for “high” with a loud *click*. If you forget that you turned it on, it stays on because the car does not reset it to default “off” when you turn the car off. Even “suicide watch” Chrysler got that switch right.

The rest of the switches in the car feel on the cheap side, especially the sunglass compartment, but, otherwise, the car’s main function switches are ok. No compartment opens with any precision - they just plop down.

In the armrest, there is an Auxiliary 3.5mm headphone jack for your MP3 player, as well as a cigarette lighter/DC12volt for charging, but it is disappointing that the car doesn’t have iPod integration right into the Navigation computer so you can play/charge and navigate through your iPod/iPhone using just the steering wheel. Fortunately a 6 CD changer with MP3/WMA capability is included. If that’s not enough for you, XM radio is built in and has its own button on the keyboard.
Voice control has a big problem distinguishing "FM" from "XM".

Once you’ve gotten past the car’s technology suite, you’ll notice that the doors are light, yet feel solid, and the leather package in the car looks and feels great. In fact, the meticulous cut of the door leather is similar to what you’d find in an old Benz or BMW. It really looks good. In fact, I’d have to say that Honda and Hyundai’s interior designer’s deserve major awards for making it look so good and feel relatively comfortable.




DRIVING EXPERIENCE

Once again, the thing that really disappointed me about the new Accord, and now the Accord Coupe, is its unfriendliness to taller drivers. The steering wheel has a lock lever telescope slide as well as tilt but it doesn’t telescope very far back (about 3 inches). The driver’s space is also a lot tighter than that of the outgoing Accord 07’ because of the panel shaping. I basically drove these cars with the dashboard in my knees even though my seat was almost flatly touching the back seat.

As sexy as the Accord Coupe is, a taller or heavier driver won't get comfortable.

The V6 engine puts out 271 HP at 6200 RPM. Even though average drivers in cities or traffic find themselves in the 3000 ~ 4000 RPM range, the V6 Accord coupe provides more than adequate power and has quick acceleration even when I was driving with a passenger load of 700 pounds. That’s pretty impressive and the V6 definitely made me smile. The Inline4 wasn’t so bad either -though you suffer tremendous power reduction (V6 offers over 250 lb-ft of torque and the 177HP I4 offers ~161).

There are two I4’s (177HP and 190HP) but most dealers seem to be ordering the 190HP. Its not horrible, but the acceleration won’t have you speeding much either. The truth is, you need that extra power if you plan to drive around with passenger loads but if you’re just a single 150 pound college student, the 177HP probably won’t disappoint you at all. The Coupe only weighs around 31 pounds less than the sedan so I really didn’t see a major acceleration advantage with just the 2-doors.

The transmission I used was the 5-speed automatic. Though the coupe and sedan offers a 5-speed Manual transmission, I don’t drive sticks and I didn’t miss it at all. The dealers around my neighborhood don’t order sticks anyway. I found the transmission to be "just right" timely upshifts and downshifts - easily ignored by people who don’t pay attention to transmissions that are doing their jobs.

Fortunately, coupe owners may opt for a 6-speed manual at no extra cost if the dealer has them. Unfortunately, mpg on the 6-speed coupe drops to a reported 17city/23 Highway since this model does not feature cylinder deactivation technology for saving energy.

Accord doesn't offer enough road isolation or enough steering competance to really be considered a sports sedan. Fortunately, steering is more precise than it was on the outgoing model. Its built for touring and not much more. Perhaps it’s the all-weather 18” tires which have been chosen to help the appearance factor contributing to the crappy feel on less than perfect roads.
Body roll is also significant in cornering though the coupe drives a bit better than the equaly equipped V6 Sedan.

They can try and make it look like a BMW but it sure as hell doesn't drive like one.

I found driving the Accord to be quite fun, although looking around at the sea of buttons could be a bit confusing or disorienting.
Dials and guages on the instrument panel are easy to read and there are lots of indicators that will notify you of the need for fluid changes or tire pressure but, the rest of the interface SUCKS.

Fortunately there are intelligently placed buttons to lower the Navigation screen’s brightness or change the color hues for night driving where the text is white on black, rather than black on white. Once you have paired your Bluetooth phone to the central computer, you may also upload your calendar and your phonebook. Once that’s done, you can use the control knob or voice command to dial numbers or search your phonebook, but, once again, the GUI is sloppy so you’ll probably end up just speaking the numbers one by one to dial while you are at highway speed.

In fact - forget trying to work with the Accord’s computers at all while your at highway speed. The design is really that bad.

OVERALL, with a fuel economy of 19city/28highway, it becomes obvious that the new Accord is larger and heavier than the Accord of yesterday. Because Honda took a chance and gave Americans what they want, Accord has been a steady seller and has done wonders for Honda's image. In fact, the new Accord offers so much, it really isn't neccessary to consider buying the more upscale 280HP Acura TL for an extra $15,000 (similarly equipped with taxes/fees) unless you're a luxury feature freak.

I’m glad Candra is happy with her purchase. Though the coupe costs around $1000 ~ $2000 more than the Sedan because of what the dealer referred to as “lower production exclusivity”, we still managed to get it for a couple thousand lower than the $35,000 I was expecting. This car needs a lot of work though. The next Accord needs a less cluttered technology package, better GUI design and more expensive buttons/switches so that they don’t feel like parts of a lead-lined Chinese toy.

Another thing that sucks about Accord's is the high price of insurance. Parts are snatched off Accords, they are stolen constantly and they are broken into for numerous pieces. Gas tank covers and doors aren't even safe, so, if you can afford a custom paint job, get one ! Honda offers a security system optional called the Sentry 2000. It comes with a key fob that allows for keyless start, added to the keyless entry buttons already embedded in the car's main keys. Wouldn't it have made more sense to just sell the car with keys that have a programmable button for keyless start?

I don’t think I could personally buy an Accord over a Chevy Malibu (which starts cheaper). If having a Navigation system wasn't mandatory and I was shopping on a ridiculously tight budget for an ultra-basic car, I’d move to the Malibu instead.

If you are buying an Accord USED and its got all the options, be sure that you get all the car's codes. This car has a Navigation radio code, an alarm code, wheel locks and a few other pieces of vehicle info easy to overlook.

This time around, the Accord impressed me much more and its easier to understand why so many of them are on my local streets. Its really a great budget-luxury car and an adequate city cruiser.

The Accords have a 3 yr, 36,000 mile warranty with a 60,000 mile power train warranty.




Other cars I Recommend Looking At


Lincoln MKS - http://www.epinions.com/content_434429988484

Hyundai Genesis - http://www.epinions.com/content_438811790980

Chevy Malibu - http://www.epinions.com/content_412862549636

Dodge Charger - http://www.epinions.com/content_415682760324

Chrysler 300 - http://www.epinions.com/content_405173603972

Honda Accord - http://www.epinions.com/content_403808751236

Cadillac CTS - http://www.epinions.com/content_401977282180

Amount Paid (US$): 30,800
Condition: New
Model Year: 2009
Model and Options: V6 271HP w/ Navigation