Honda Accord Euro 2012: Long-Term Test

Long-Term Tests
motoring.com.au aims to make your choice of vehicle easier. Our Editorial section does this via our mix of news, international and local launch reviews as well as our seven-day tests.

From time to time we also take the opportunity to spend more time in a vehicle. These longer term tests can be as short as a couple of weeks, but more recently we've settled on a six-month period as indicative of 'normal' ownership.

Long-term tests give our staff writers and contributors a chance to get to know a car as an owner would. While the car is with us, we pay for fuel, pay for the servicing and generally use and live with the car as a new owner would.

We believe long-term tests give car buyers an added insight into the vehicle on test, but also the qualities behind the brand and nameplate. The extended period also allows us to touch base with the dealer networks in question.

No surprise manufacturers tend to have a love-hate relationship with long-term tests ... Six months is plenty long enough to fall out of love with the latest and greatest, and start to nitpick -- just like real owners do.

Honda Accord Euro
It has been nearly four years since the last review of a Honda Accord Euro by the chaps and chapettes at motoring.com.au. Four years in the local market should be long enough to leave Honda's designed-for-Europe mid-size sedan trailing in the wake of many newer models from the manufacturer's direct competitors.

But a week in the latest vehicle to join our long-term test fleet reveals that Honda has not been content merely to mow the grass around the Wheels Car of the Year for 2008. Points that we first raised when the car was a much newer design have been addressed subsequently, presumably through running changes. The Accord Euro — this one is the base model with automatic transmission — has already impressed us with its sportier exhaust note, for example, and it's more refined at higher revs than before. Plus it's a quiet car at highway speeds, with just some tyre noise seeping through to the cabin.

Power delivery is another point where the Accord Euro seems to have matured with age. A peaky engine measured against some of its competitors, the 2.4-litre engine develops maximum torque along more of a linear path than before. Use the shift paddles with the lever pulled back into Sport mode and the Honda's engine can be kept nicely on the boil — without as much effort from the driver. Changes are effected quicker and more responsively than we recall from driving the Accord Euro previously, but the swift shifts take place with very little anti-shift shock. It's an intelligent box, the five-speeder, providing quantifiable engine braking on hills. It could do with a sixth gear though. Indeed, our one and only gripe with the transmission so far is there's a major gap between fourth and fifth, with the latter being very long-legged for highway cruising, but that is a flaw on arterial roads running through the suburbs. An additional gear would be useful, especially when the transmission is reluctant to kick down from fifth, for the sake of conserving fuel. This can leave the car in the wrong gear to tackle hills on occasions.

To illustrate how this is a transmission issue rather than a powerplant problem, the auto-equipped Accord Euro will launch rapidly and spin a wheel away from a standing start. That's just by planting the foot, without even building up the revs first. The lower gears and the engine characteristics are right for the car's mass and drivetrain configuration; it's in the higher gears that performance can suffer slightly. That said, most drivers will be perfectly content with the performance available from the Honda. And it must be remembered that this is a new car, with very few kilometres on the clock. So expect straight-line performance to improve in the months to come. Hopefully fuel consumption will improve also. To date, with an even mix of freeway driving and peak-hour commuting, the fuel consumption figure is 12.1L/100km, according to the car's trip computer. That must be considered in the context of horrendously bad traffic in Melbourne over the previous week.

Handling, steering and roadholding remain high points of the Accord Euro. Who says the Japanese can't tune suspension and steering? Or that front-wheel drives are hopelessly inadequate at the first bend in the road? The Honda feels smaller and much livelier than we've come to expect from many mid-sized sedans. It turns in promptly and grips like a limpet — all the while sticking close to the driver's chosen line. The car can be placed very precisely and doesn't wander away from that line through the corner as soon as throttle is applied. It's a joy to drive as far as cornering goes.

Ride quality doesn't warrant the same praise. It's fine over larger bumps or those traversed at lower speeds, but can be quite firm more often than not. Is that a deal-breaker? If you want a sporty drive that can accommodate four or five, then you'll probably know already what you're getting with the Honda.

But on that point — accommodation — one aspect that hasn't changed since 2008 is the car's rear-seat legroom, which struggles to better the same dimension in certain small cars. There's not even enough knee room for larger adults, let alone room to stretch out, even without the driver's seat adjusted back as far as it will go. That's probably our harshest criticism of the Honda for now.

One other concern, of a lesser nature, is the Honda won't stream audio from a smartphone unless the phone is connected by cable to the car. On the flipside, the car will charge your phone during a typical morning commute.

All the passenger doors secure easily with a muffled thud. While feeling as hefty and solid as the doors, the boot lid requires hardly any muscle to close. It certainly doesn't need to be slammed. The Honda comes with a full size (matching alloy) spare, with reasonable boot space to offset the lack of rear-seat legroom. All the instruments are easy to read and, where the Accord Euro is a step beyond the Mazda Mazda6, is the view of the instruments through the steering wheel. Major switches are well located and we're struck by the soft damping of the indicator and wiper stalks. Although the interior looks a little bland, in terms of its colour scheme, it's stylish otherwise and Honda has offset the charcoal-everywhere look with pale blue ambient lighting in the footwells. The centre fascia continues to look busy, but in the entry-level model at least, it's no more so than the Mazda6.

For a base-model car selling at a price just above $33,000 (with auto transmisison and metallic paint), the Accord Euro features some surprising 'extras' as standard. Given Melbourne's inclement weather recently, the demist function for the exterior mirrors was a God send and the car will also drop the left mirror when reverse gear is selected.

So it's mostly a good news story. As a matter of fact, it has been a bit of a wrench handing the Honda on to another member of the team.

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