We recently got to spend a week in Northern California with a new Honda Accord Sport sedan with the Honda Sensing package. How does Honda's flagship sedan measure up in its latest form?
This Accord came with the optional Honda Sensing package, including accident avoidance braking. Yes, if sensors detect you are about to hit something, the car’s voice command will warn you to brake. Adaptive cruise control is also part of this package and when running the cruise control in traffic, the car will slow down and speed up on its own to maintain your speed while keeping a safe distance between you and the car ahead.
Lane departure warning is also included and the steering wheel vibrates when you go out of your lane. The car will also steer itself back into its lane. You could argue that these features are overkill, but they do help a driver.
As for the "Sport" tag, the Accord offers some rather attractive add ons like a dual exhaust, rear deck spoiler and 19x8” alloy wheels mounted with 235/40 R19 all season tires.
The Accord is by no means a sports car—or even a sport sedan if we are being honest. What it is, is a reasonably priced sporty family car and like the other cars in this class, what most Americans should be driving.
At $26,785, the Accord is reasonably priced. It got nearly 30 mpg in mixed driving and was relatively quiet and comfortable to drive.
The handling is not awe inspiring, nor is the overall driving experience. Again, this is a sporty, relatively low priced sporty sedan, not a performance car.
This is the kind of car that brought Honda to the table, and they are still very adept at building this type of car.
Okay - I drive a 2011 Accord 5-speed manual for my sales job. Boring and weak? Sort of.
But at 140,000 miles with the original brake pads all I care about is putting money in my pocket and not into this car.
And daily I race through the gears like Mario Andretti - lame car but I really like this car for what it does. I'm considering the sport, Sport.
The fact they still sell these with manual transmissions give me hope. A false hope I'm sure, but I'll take it where I can get it.
I dig my 2015 Sport with the manual. Only things I would change about it is an upgrade to the stereo, and making the rear seat a 60/40 split with armrest pass through -- it's a bit annoying that the back seat fold down is all or nothing. One day I'll get around to buying the parts from the prior generation to make the rear armrest a pass through.
PeterAK wrote: I dig my 2015 Sport with the manual. Only things I would change about it is an upgrade to the stereo, and making the rear seat a 60/40 split with armrest pass through -- it's a bit annoying that the back seat fold down is all or nothing. One day I'll get around to buying the parts from the prior generation to make the rear armrest a pass through.
I still don't get why Honda does this on some cars. I remember ILX consumers losing their E36 M3 because the rear seat was all or nothing but a less Civic on the same platform had 60/40.
I really do enjoy the look of the 13+ Accord Sports and love the interior. I wish they gave it the same K24z7 the Si had instead of the Earthdreams variant and like others said a better audio system. I would have been sold on it if it had those two things.
The good thing is you can get a 12? or 13-14 Accord Sport on the cheap, finding a manual is tough but they are there.
I love my Accord Chumpcar and I can keep racing Accords in the future as long as they keep churning out manuals.
I love the Accord manuals. I agree they aren't flat out sports sedans, but for a transportation appliance, they're quite sporty. Plus they're comfy, have amazing room inside and are dead nuts reliable. Like DirtyBird said, you can find used ones for a song.
But I'll say it again, as I've said so many times with Honda. Why the berkeley don't they offer a 6spd manual with the V6 in the sedan???? Yeah, I know, not many people would buy it. But I can't imagine that it would cost much of anything for Honda to do it. They already offer that combo in the Accord coupe, so how hard can it be to toss it into the sedan? Are you listening Honda? Dodge/Chrysler, I'm looking at you too...you offer a manual in the Challenger, but not the Charger/300 (OK, I can see the 300 not offering it, but the Charger, c'mon...). With my 135 miles of driving per day, lots of it being highway, plus my need to take my kids to sports activities, I am DYING for a tire smokin', highway cruising, family hauling, just basic competent handling, stick shift hatch/wagon/sedan. Nobody except the Germans build them, and I can't afford/don't want to deal with the German maintenance and repair costs. I don't count the FoST, as it's too small.
So the "sports" package doesn't offer any changes to the engine or suspension besides the wheels? At least it does have a manual.
On the Charger only coming with an automatic - apparently it required a floorpan change to fit a manual, and the new floorpan would have needed separate crash testing. When they redesigned the pan for the Challenger, they realized that had been a mistake, but it apparently was too late to fix the Charger floor pan.
A really decent car, but the same 26K would buy a base WRX. I want a sportier daily driver, and methinks I will give this car a pass, even though it is highly competent and comes with a manual.
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