Honda's 2017 Accord: New Accord is a reliable lifesaver

2017 Honda Accord Sedan Touring and Accord Coupe Touring
2017 Honda Accord Sedan Touring and Accord Coupe Touring

Objectivity sometimes eludes me when discussing the Honda Accord, but this is understandable.

After all, a 2017 Honda Accord saved my life; a 2002 model saved my son's.

I'll tell Boy Wonder's story first. He was rolling down 7th Street on a wet, cold, January afternoon, in 15-year-old, one-owner Accord, which had survived more than one mishap and earned the nickname "tank," which it certainly was on the day it died.

A petite, comely, but apparently distracted, young lady pulled out from a church parking lot. Jonathan, who is still yet to have even one traffic ticket, was immediately concerned he would T-bone the young lady's compact car and cause grievous bodily harm.

He veered left and hit the horn, trying to get her attention. No luck. He was in the middle of the turn lane when she T-boned him in the passenger door, knocking him into the path of an oncoming heavy-duty pickup. The blow whipped the Accord around and the truck smacked the rear bumper dead-center.

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El Dorado News Times

El Dorado News-Times/Michael OrrellSpecial guest: Aalyih Calewell, a first grader at Retta Brown Elementary, eats lunch with her mother Rachel during the school’s annual Christmas lunch on Friday. El Dorado students will begin their Christmas break at the end of school on December 20 and return to school on January 6.

Now, one of the few knocks one hears on Accords is they have oddly shaped trunks. I had never noticed anything amiss about this Accord's trunk until the day I rolled up on the accident. The first thing I noticed was an ambulance, two fire trucks, two police cars, and our old Accord with its trunk lid popped open.

Everything below the lid was now in the back seat. The car was bent like an accordion stopped in mid-note.

This will not go down as one of my finest moments in fatherhood, an endeavor for which I have many more happy than unhappy memories. It was only after I spotted a tall, dark-haired, kind-faced, scruffily handsome young man, attempting to reassure the young woman who had just totaled his car, that I remembered to start breathing again.

It would be an hour or so before the flow of adrenaline allowed him to start feeling the pain of the blow, and several months before it went away. Still, the structure of the Accord's chassis, its crumple zones and the construction of the seats worked together to let him walk away from a spectacular wreck.

Tank went down fighting like the champ that she was. The two-truck driver hopped in and turned the key. She started right up and backed herself up onto the flat-bed wrecker that took her away forever.

You may wonder how someone could be so distracted that they don't even see a car they are about hit. Oh, it's not that hard.

My wreck was spectacular because it never happened.

I was headed to Austin on a fall Sunday, suffering along with everyone else on I-35. The Cowboys had the late game. It was early in the season, so the Eagles were still relevant in the NFC East, and I was surfing the XM channels for the Philly-Detroit game, which the Lions wound up winning on a walk-off field goal. Ha!

The only trouble with satellite radio is that it has more channels than Congress has for not getting anything done. On top of that, Honda's no-knob radio design makes channel surfing an attention-commanding, labor-intensive chore. 

I was pushing the touch screen when suddenly I felt the safety harness slam into me and yank me rearward. I looked up to see the steering wheel and dash coming my way at a frightening speed.

This Accord had Honda's complex Safety Sensing suite of technologies. One is frontal collision mitigation, which uses a millimeter wave radar unit, located behind the front grille, and a monocular camera, located between the rearview mirror and windshield, to scan traffic conditions ahead.

The camera can discern size and shape differences, to differentiate between a vehicle and a pedestrian, while the radar compares vehicle speed to that of the object ahead. When the system determines a collision is possible, visual and audible alerts prompt the driver to take corrective actions.

Apparently, I was so engrossed in finding the Iggles-who pretty much stayed lost all season-that I never heard or saw the alerts. That prompted the car to hit the brakes. Hard.

That finally got my attention. I managed to get the car stopped, while moving to the shoulder so the pickup behind me did not imprint the back of my head with a blue Ford oval. He scudded past me, stopping inches short of the vehicle ahead of me. Left to my own devices, I would have plowed into that thing at somewhere around 60 mph. And then got smacked by the pickup.

Really, really bad day avoided.

 

Ninth generation

All of which is not why I would tell you to go buy a 2017 Accord. No, I would tell you to do that because they are great cars, and have been throughout the nine generations that first started gracing American Highways 41 years ago.

In a nutshell, Accord has always been a pleasant driving, smooth handling, gas-sipping, feature-filled car large enough to carry a family on long vacations. The latest generation, an airy, spacious design that came out in 2012, is the best version yet, exhibiting typical accord qualities of durability and high resale values.

Doing battle in what is arguably the most competitive market niche, the Accord usually comes in second in sales to the Toyota Camry, a slot ahead of the Nissan Altima. Ford's Fusion and Chevy's Malibu rounded out the top 5 in 2016.

Perhaps notable in sales statistics is Honda's fleet sales. There are none. The reasons behind that are complex but the one that buyers should be most concerned with is that, at trade-in time, your used Honda is not competing with tens of thousands of vehicles dumped into the market by leasing companies. This, and Honda durability, are why Hondas hold their value. 

Accords come in two-door and four-door models, with a 4-cylinder or 6-cylinder engine or hybrid power plant, with a six-speed manual, six-speed automatic or continuously variable transmission and in six trim lines.

A base LX is priced at $22,455, a fully-loaded Hybrid Touring models $36,790, transportation included.

With the auto industry experiencing its first significant sales downturn in seven years, now is a propitious time to shop for new vehicles. Though Honda is being mum about it, a 10th-generation Accord is expected in showrooms this fall. 

As summer wears on, Honda and its dealers may start to offer some great deals. In the meantime, Honda is offering 0.9 percent financing on new vehicles and 1.9 percent on used ones.

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