2023 Honda Accord | AI Generated Sedan

I'm here in California at the 11th Gen Honda Accord launch and thankfully Mark will be joining me. You ever eat ice cream with a fork? I do. We're gonna be talking about some of the engineering. So this 11th Gen Accord is built on the prior generation Accord architecture. However, just like every modern car, it's been made more rigid. New bulkheads, more adhesives, more strengthening to the individual components to this vehicle have allowed this to be a quieter, more premium feeling Accord. Due to the extra body rigidity, less of the NVH from the outside world makes it into the cabin. The rear track has been made wider for more stability. Essentially, the philosophy of the Accord, talking to the chief engineer, is he wanted to make a more luxurious car. He didn't want to make it hardcore or sporty. In fact, the Accord really was never a sporty sedan in the grand scheme of life. He wanted this to be a luxury oasis. Everything from the way the dampers are tuned, they're now more compliant to the steering. There's less friction in the steering, which means it's smoother. The road imperfections no longer disturb your arthritis riddled hands. Instead, you have direct steering. You get new seats and you get two different drivetrains. Gone is the manual and the ZF or 10-speed automatic thing. Now you get wonderful CVT action. They have been recalibrated. You get new belts so you don't have to hear the CVT line and you get two different drivetrains. The 1.5 liter turbocharged direct injected engine gets some calibration differences and it is found in the lower trim levels. It makes less than 200 horsepower, less than 200 foot-pounds of torque, returns in the mid-30-ish miles per gallon. Then you get this hybrid, which is found in all of the premium trim levels. It makes 204 or 5 horsepower, two or three more than the last one. Wow! And it makes more torque, a lot more torque. In fact, makes now in the mid-240s foot-pounds of torque. It will return good fuel economy. In our drive, Mark and I are assholes. It did not return good fuel economy. But in the real world, you should expect in the high 40s, 50 miles per gallon, which is very, very, very impressive. But with that, Mark would like to deliver a message about the interior space. So we got the new Accord here. It's sugar free! If you're one of those in the target demographic of over 40, much like myself, the Accord has grown in size significantly, or at least it feels that way. If you take a look at the outside, you might walk around this the first time and look at it compared to the previous generation. You might think that car looks AI generated. From some angles, it looks like a Taurus Interceptor police car. Other angles, it looks like a Chevrolet Malibu. Regardless of how you feel about the changes in the exterior styling, the Accord traditionally has been traditional. It's been conservative as hell. There's never one that stood out as like, oh man, I got to look back at it. And it's never stood out to the point where it was so grotesque, you didn't want to look at it like me with a shirt off. When you're looking at this for $28,000 up to about $36,000, there's a lot to like. Not like the previous generation Accord had any problems. In fact, that was the best Accord interior they'd ever done. They returned back to physical controls, ease to use, it wasn't overly reliant on screens, and now this is basically the same thing, but they've changed it to a different style that is more in line with the Civic, the Pilot, and you see that. You have the metal grille in the center. All the very similar HVAC controls and the clickiness on the steering wheel. And honestly, for what this is at the price point, it is very good. It's a little bit nicer than the Civic. There's more soft textures. The new infotainment on the upper trim levels that you can option is far superior than the old Honda setup. Faster processing, better screen, better layout, and the big thing, they moved to Android Automotive instead of a forked version of Android. So it feels far more cohesive. You have Google Maps built in, you have Google Assistant built in if you care about that stuff. It's just the technology part along with the systems have been greatly improved. Now in the hybrid, what are you looking for? Gauge clusters are slightly different. You have paddles here. The paddles control your regenerative braking mode and it goes into, maxed out, it goes into almost a one paddle mode. And that's great if you've been on a downhill like my life. And we get into some of the other things like center stack, huge storage areas, mechanical shifter, everything is very, very simple but doesn't feel cheap. That's really hard to do. That's something that Honda has done great for the longest period of time. And the biggest change here, the seats are far better. And we complained about this on the previous generation Accord, they kind of felt flimsy. But the front seats, as soon as you set your butt in there, there's a big difference in the lumbar, the backside and the underside area. It's super, super comfortable. Last thing to talk about, and they've told me about 100 times during this press trip, let's talk about the trunk. It's huge. Class leading. And if you're a man like me, who enjoys a cinnamon ice cream with a fork, that's all you're going to need. Just like my grandpa on the tow gate in his sixth gen Accord. Now I'm just picking up where he left off, Jack. As we talked about in their intro, it is more rigid like your body, but softer in every other way. Every bushing has been made softer. This is a more comfortable, luxurious car by design. And we are in the sportiest trim. When I think sporty, I think hybrid CBT. This bad boy makes two more horsepower than the last hybrid. The CBT has been recalibrated. The belt is supposedly quieter. And it makes more torque. I want to take my belt off and beat you for taking me into the California tow gate in this thing. Man. So we drove this on the highway. Clearly a toy, a tight toga-esque road is not the home of the hybrid Accord, but on the regular road, this is much quieter than it used to be, right? Yeah. That's the whole point of this car. The Accord has always been the non Camry. It was always trying to have some level of fun to drive some inputs where you didn't feel dead. But the sacrifice to a lot of that is it was a little bit noisier. There was always a ton of tire noise coming from the Accord, that pinging sound you'd always get. And I think they finally just said, you know what? There's not a lot of sedans left. We have the Civic for the fun part. Our only other car is the Accord. Let's move it more quiet, more refined, more soft. But it still has the Accord body control. It has great body control. Even though this is softer, it doesn't flail around. It doesn't flop around. When I saw this, I'm like, I was really worried. I'm like, it looks like a Malibu. It reminds me of the old Chevy Lumina in the front. And I'm like, they better not have turned this thing into a boat. And while it is big, and it is lifeless, definitely lifeless. All the inputs are dead. It drives great. It is super, super soft. It's the car that you want to cruise around. And one of our favorite cars last year was the ES, the Lexus ES. This has a lot of what makes that car great built into this at a much lower price point. I will say the drivetrain, too, is less droney than what you get in the Toyota Lexus products. This hybrid setup doesn't annoy you as much. Like this thing, it's fake shifts aren't that bothersome. And even up on this hill where you are literally foot to the floor the entire time, because this is not a particularly fast car, the gearbox does a good, good job. It really does. Yeah, this car is, you know, the drivetrain part, this is slow. Like, you joke, like, literally, we are driving uphill foot to the floor the entire time. And then you have the CVTs, fake shifts, which aren't rubber bandy at all. The closest thing this reminds me to is the iCVT that Hyundai and Kia have put in their car. It feels really natural. It feels more like a torque converted automatic. I think, I think to myself, like, it wouldn't be more efficient not to have it shifting. But up here, could you imagine the drone if it didn't have some type of like, breaking up that that constant engine noise? This hybrid CVT is good enough that a journalist who will remain nameless thought it was an actual automatic, which is saying a lot, right? That's not throwing that journalist under the bus. I'm just saying that it does do a good job feeling somewhat refined. But one complaint I really do have with this car, though, coming from, you know, a family who's had Accords in the past, and we've talked to a lot of drivers who move into Accords who aren't exposed to all of the sporty cars that we own or drive, they want to get into a Accord and they don't want to give up the semblance of fun that they had in their youth when they had a different car. Now that they have a family, now that they're getting older, they need a bigger, more luxurious car, but they didn't want to give up that sportiness. That's sadly what they gave up in this car. While it does handle well, the steering might as well be a simulation. You don't have a two liter, you don't have an automatic, you don't have the option for a manual. This car now is really just an entry level luxury. It is with compliance engines. The entire drivetrain setup on all the models is just for compliance purposes to meet fuel economy numbers and to meet emissions. And that's where this thing, to me, is as good of a car as it is. It's like that middle ground until they get to pure electrification. That's what Honda keeps saying. We're going EV, we're going EV. This is like the step there. So it just feels like half measures. And there's some soul that is missing from this car, like cohesively from the outside to the inside to the driving experience. As good as it is, it just feels like it's missing something. And I think some of it's just on the drivetrain. I think if you don't live on the California toge, your name isn't Takumi and you want to run lap times up the hill. If you drive this in the real world and you're commuting or you just do a lot of highway miles, this will be a vastly superior car to the prior gen and the economy. You and I have been driving this like a maniac, like foot to the floor for 30 seconds at a time, and it's still getting 22 at work. Like 22 would be like the catastrophic worst. You're supposed to be getting over 40. You will 100% on our highway drive. I mean, that's where it's going to reward you. It's a car that's going to chew up miles, assuming the drivetrain is reliable. You're going to love driving this thing. I mean, just just the little things we talked about in the interior to make a huge difference. But let's head in the south. Yeah, Mark. Send me off. Final thoughts on the new Honda Accord. This is our first driving impression and look at the car, meaning we only spent one day with it. So understand that. So here it is. After talking with engineering, we know that they were trying to achieve a few things. Make this feel more upscale, quiet, refined, better riding, better fuel economy, lower emissions. Does that sound familiar? It sounds like absolutely everything that every other brand is trying to do. The case of the Accord, they achieved that. The car rides better and it's way more compliant while still handling OK. It has a much better interior space in terms of seating. The front seat design has been changed and improved greatly. The technology, including the infotainment, moving to full Android automotive is way better if you opt for that, including the gauge cluster technology. All of that is thought out, including the safety systems have been improved. They've also added MMS, which we didn't talk about in the drive because I didn't really want to because it's a blatant copy of Mazda's GVC or G vectoring system. So they're basically taking what everybody else is doing here and just kind of bringing it up to speed. The last generation Accord, you can tell they spent a lot of money on. I feel like this car, they just updated what they needed it to or needed to, to get it up to spec in terms of the current market requirements of safety and technology. And then they're taking whatever development budget they have and just putting it all in their SUVs to refresh those. In the case of the Accord, you can tell on the outside, it just feels very, very basic. And I owned a couple of generation old Accord. I bought it brand new. And I can tell you categorically that no Honda Accord has ever pushed the bleeding edge of styling. They've always been very conservative. They are commuter tools and that's what makes them great. And this car is not so much different other than I literally feel like you could cover up the badges on this car and nobody would know what the hell it is. That's how generic it looks. And I think that carries right over to the drivetrains. And I understand, and you have to understand how the car industry is working. These engines, the way that this car is set up is purely for compliance. The four cylinder is there for emissions and fuel economy. The CVT is there to help fuel economy. The hybridization is there to help fuel economy and refinement. That's it. So it feels just like you're driving around a Bosch dishwasher. I'm going to be honest. It's so just hyper generic. And there's this hole left. There's this soul that's missing with all these new cars and with all these options on the market, namely with so many SUVs that are going to give you more space and more budget in terms of how much development they're putting into them. This feels like they needed to do more, but I understand why they didn't because sedans are kind of like, do we keep making them or do we like throw it out? I don't know. The cord is a really good car just end of story. It's a great car, but I'm worried about Honda in the future, how they're going to continue kind of pushing forward and creating this soul to them that some of their new products are missing, even though they're all good. Every car is good now, to be honest, really, they are. Most people are going to like it. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next video.