Impetus: Honda is dumping the V6 engine from the Accord, replacing with turbo-charged four
Despite its fairly vanilla existence, I’ve often held the Honda Accord in relative esteem. The first time in my life that my family got a new car, it was a 1990 Honda Accord. White, naturally, as Asian people loved cars that were either white or champagne color. It was like the coolest event in the world back then, and the Accord seemed like a spaceship compared to the dated old Toyota Celica that it had replaced.
Years later, my family ended up getting another Accord, a 1998 model. I remember this one, because I thought that the car was intended to be for me, but ultimately ended up with my dad absconding with it, when he was working away from home, out in Chattanooga for a few years, which led to a lot of sour grapes on my end. For a while, my dad drove the shit out of it before he ended up barely driving it at all, and when he traded it in a little over a year ago, the car was nearly 16 years old and never crossed the 100,000 mile mark, which for a Honda is barely half its lifespan. Along the way, my mom got a used 1994 Accord that she ran into the ground, but the point is that my family has had a lot of Honda Accords.
Ultimately, I view the Accord as a trustworthy reliable car, in spite of its vanilla existence, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned more recently, it’s the de facto car of choice for Indian families; seriously, the sheer amount of Honda Accords in my apartment complex belonging to Indian families is almost an anthropological marvel. But the Accord is a name that people associate with affordable, safe, and decently performing, and if I were at that stage of my life where I wanted a family-friendly automobile that I’d feel good about anyone driving and wouldn’t be too much of a chore for me to drive myself, the Honda Accord wouldn’t be the worst choice in the world.