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| Road Test Honda Accord 2.2 i-DTEC EX GT |
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Not Ready Yet
The EX GT is also exceptionally well-equipped. As standard, it comes with eight-way adjustable front seats, an advanced navigation pack, front and rear parking sensors, a rear parking camera (which you'll need because rear visibility is terrible), automatic headlights and wipers, dual-zone climate control air-conditioning, a pollen filter, a Bluetooth hands-free phone system, cruise control, a refrigerated glovebox, Vehicle Stability Assist, Trailer Stability Assist, a multifunction steering wheel and all sorts of other bits and pieces. Honda offers two petrol engines and a diesel in the Accord range, but if you want an EX GT then diesel is the only option. The previous 2.2-litre i-CDTi has been replaced by a similarly-sized (actually slightly smaller) unit known as i-DTEC. This produces a maximum of 148bhp, or 10bhp more than the i-CDTi did, but - oops - it makes no significant difference to the car's performance, though it doesn't feel at all slow. Combined fuel economy and CO2 emissions of 50.4mpg and 148g/km are also pretty much the same as before. It's at this point that criticisms of the Accord start to creep in. One poor aspect of the i-CDTi was that its alternator drive made an annoying whine; this should have been eradicated during development, and Honda never managed to do anything about it while the engine was in production. And now, with the i-DTEC, here it is again! It's quieter than before, certainly, but unless you have the radio on while you're driving - or you're sharing the car with chatty passengers - you're never going to forget that it's there.
Various other gurgles and rattles from the engine make their way into the cabin too, and to be fair this is partly because Honda's efforts to reduce road and wind noise have been very successful. But friends who rode in the test car all commented on the sound effects, and complained that they did not seem appropriate for something which cost over £27,000. (A brief digression on price: the EX GT officially costs £24,950, but the test car had the optional metallic paint and the ADAS technology pack, which consists of Collision Mitigation Braking System, Lane Keeping Assist System, Adaptive Cruise Control and xenon headlights. That lot brought the total to £27,085.) There were also comments from my associates about the amount of room in the rear. One friend who, like me, is over six feet tall, simply could not sit behind me when the driver's seat was in the position I preferred, and shorter passengers were likewise critical about the available space.
Mind you, I can't speak highly enough about the front seats, which are magnificently comfortable and supportive. This was one of Honda's targets during the design process, and it was achieved by throwing a lot of money around. Project manager Toshiro Morita says that he was able to devote so much of the budget by telling the engineers to make the spare wheel well square rather than round, because square is cheaper. This strikes me as a brilliant solution: I mean, who cares what shape the spare wheel well is? The seats contribute a great deal to the driving quality, which in some circumstances is quite good. The Accord is excellent as a motorway cruiser, for example, and it behaves serenely round town, while in the country it can be hurled round quite effectively. But if you just want to mosey along A- or B-roads without hurrying, everything goes to pieces. The Accord is thrown into confusion by undulations which you would barely notice if you were driving anything else. There is no lurching and no jarring, but the sense of uncontrolled wallowing is enough to make you feel ill within the first two hundred yards. Honda says that the benchmark rival in terms of handling was the BMW 3-Series, and I'd be interested to know if anyone in the company genuinely believes that the target has been met.
Another curiosity is the design of the boot. There's 460 litres of luggage space, which is quite useful, but only a small part of the floor is flat, which could make packing large loads a bit of a trial. And if you have to manhandle something large, awkward and heavy into the compartment, first you're going to have to manoeuvre it through the boot opening (which is narrow, with a high sill), and second you may start interfering with the DVD changer, audio speakers and various bits of wiring loom which for some reason are exposed and unprotected. That could be nasty, not to mention expensive. My overall impression of the Accord is that it was brought to market too soon. It's a good car in many ways, but it won't be a great one until Honda has finished developing it. Price: £24,950 |
