Honda Accord Euro Luxury Navi

Road Test - Honda Accord Euro Luxury Navi

Overall rating: 3.0/5.0
Engine/Drivetrain/Chassis: 3.0/5.0
Price, Packaging and Practicality: 3.0/5.0
Safety: 3.5/5.0
Behind the wheel: 3.0/5.0
X-factor: 2.5/5.0

About our ratings

The predecessor to the new Honda Accord Euro was generally regarded as the most capable car in the medium segment for dynamic prowess. This was a car that dragged off an Aston Martin DB5 and a Jaguar XK E-Type on a certain well-known British motoring show, just to prove a point about how far automotive design and technology have advanced in 40 years.

The latest Euro is cheaper and in the top trim fitted with just about all the equipment any new car buyer needs. But how does it stack up? Does newer mean better?

One of the gadgets in the new car is a different type of damper that varies its damping according to whether the springs are absorbing bumps or body roll. Despite these fancy-schmancy dampers fitted to the Accord Euro, the ride, while better than some of its Euro 'competitors' is not as comfortable as we recall for its principal combatant, the Mazda6.

Where the new Honda excels is in its impressive lack of body roll and remarkable combination of neutral handling and rock-solid roadholding.

Try something 'silly' such as accelerating hard out of a corner on a wet road or lifting off the throttle at around the apex and you'd expect to feel some some scrabbling for grip through the wheel or some weight transfer through the seat. No way -- the Accord Euro does neither. It's stable and not at all throttle-sensitive -- meaning it's very safe.

That said, the steering is a bit snoozy, to be frank.

It took this tester a little while to get used to some aspects of the new Honda. The engine, for example, is not as blessed with torque as one might expect from a 2.4-litre four and it's a bit raucous from around 5000rpm, which is frequently where you need to have the engine operating if you want performance.

You have to work the engine (with prodigious use of the paddles in the auto transmission's Sports mode) to get the most out of it. Despite giving the Accord Euro an occasional flogging, the vehicle averaged 10.9L/100km during the test, which is on par with expectations, given the size of the car and the engine displacement.

Once you've driven it for a decent interval though, the engine begins to offer up its own brand of charm -- though it's not as acoustically appealing as the Mazda6.

The sequential paddle-shift five-speed automatic transmission is not as smooth in its changes as some other boxes around and nor are the paddle-shift changes as responsive as we would like. It's almost as if Honda is unsure as to whether the sequential-shift changes should be aggressive and swift or remain slightly soft and cuddly. The ratios are appropriate for the weight of the car and the engine output.

The Accord Euro is an attractive car and there's nary a nano-second of retro styling about it. The boot is quite large, but the rear-seat legroom is still slightly handicapped as a consequence. Headroom in the rear is not bad for average-size adults, but they won't be able to stretch out much.

In this, the top-spec Accord Euro, there's a very complex-looking centre fascia with a single-point controller similar in execution to BMW's iDrive. While there's a lot to like in the Accord Euro Luxury Navi (comfy seats, good driving position, huge footrest, handbrake where it should be, legible and attractive instrumentation), the whole lot is let down by this controller's needlessly complex operation. Setup, info and satnav functions were still largely 'greek' to us after a week's familiarization.

Add to that, there's an INFO button with an up-arrow icon on the steering wheel -- for the trip computer functions -- in addition to the INFO button on the fascia. To disable the speed alerts, which were set at 80km/h and 105km/h (yes, this car provides TWO of them), the driver pulled up by the side of the road and browsed through the owner's manual for close to 20 minutes.

To customise the settings for the speed alerts, it's necessary not only to find the section of the manual dealing with that, but a subsequent section of text which informs you that the car must be at rest, with the ignition on and the transmission in Park.

After this disheartening experience, it was some days before we bothered to experiment with the satellite navigation to determine why the voice prompts were inaudible. Turns out that some previous nuff-nuff had reduced the volume of the voice prompts to zero! This is something that can only be adjusted through the iDrive-like controller, unlike BMW systems, which allow you to adjust the voice prompt volume with the audio volume control knob during a voice prompt.

And that's one particular issue we have with the Accord Euro. Granted, once you have it set up to your satisfaction, you may never need to change it, but until that time, you stand to spend a lot of time in the company of the owners' manual and drilling down through different menus in the system to make the necessary changes.

At the end of the day, it doesn't make the fascia layout and controls significantly simpler, either.

In fact, the centre fascia is a relatively complex array of buttons for different HVAC and audio functions, but for the most part, that's preferable. At least, in regard to the HVAC console, the buttons are marked with text, so they're easy to find and use.

With the satnav control knob also looking after functions such as setting the time or adjusting the screen display intensity, Honda has effectively duplicated this complex arrangement with the trip computer functions which can be configured from the steering wheel as well.

Fit and finish for the Accord Euro met Honda's usual standard and notwithstanding our gripes about the complex control systems, the interior is stylish and generally well laid out.

Despite being deeply recessed within the dash, the LCD screen was susceptible to sun glare early in the morning. The ability to change the screen display for the satnav mapping from a light to dark background (the latter for use at night), was welcome. So in mitigation, many of the sophisticated and configurable infotainment settings are good to have, but it's just an annoyance to work out how to configure them.

Sadly, the convoluted comfort and convenience feature controls detracted from the overall pleasure of testing the Accord Euro during the week we had the car. Some people love this sort of stuff, but as far as this reviewer is concerned, it's a car, not a Gameboy.

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