2013 Honda Accord Sport Sedan Review (Part 1)

2013 Honda Accord Sport Sedan Review (Part 1)

Lapping suburbia in Honda’s everyman sports sedan

The Accord is nothing if not popular; Honda’s bestseller ranked second among all cars in the U.S. in 2013, with 366,678 sales. Unit number 58,634 entered the Car and Driver fleet shortly after this ninth generation made its debut and just after the Accord landed on our 10Best list for the 27th time. We have feted each generation since the second; we failed to recognize the first gen, not out of any editorial malfeasance, but because we didn’t establish our annual awards until 1983, after the ur-Accord was already out of production.

2013 Honda Accord Sport Sedan rear view

Do you know who really loves the Honda Accord, though? Thieves. The Accord tops recent surveys of the most-stolen vehicles by both the National Insurance Crime Bureau as well as security vendor LoJack. While that bellwether of desirability won’t be touted in Honda’s marketing, our long-termer’s as tested price of just $24,180 qualifies as a steal. Or perhaps we just drove it like one.

“It's hard to buy much car in this price range,” opined senior editor Jared Gall, “unless you buy this, which is the perfect car for just about everybody.”

2013 Honda Accord Sport Sedan back view

Our idea of perfection was a sedan in the new Sport trim with a six-speed manual transmission. Having selected this model, we were absolved of making further choices since Honda restricts most options on the Sport to dealer-installed equipment. All Sport models are powered by Honda's direct-injected 2.4-liter four. And while a continuously variable automatic is optional, we avoided it, fearing it would make us swell up like a nut-allergic kid touring the Skippy plant. The only other decision to make was color, or perhaps we should say shade, because Honda's Ohio paint booth will only spray manual Sports in black or gray. We chose the latter to offset the dour black-cloth interior. And that was it. We imagine the Accord Sport to be a favorite of the clinically indecisive.

2013 Honda Accord Sport Sedan interior

It would soon become a favorite of ours. Honda chopped 3.5 inches of length and 0.9 inch of wheelbase from the last-generation Accord, yet the large-car interior remains, earning praise for its roominess, comfort, and ergonomics. “Why can't all sedans be this pleasant to live with?” asked executive editor Aaron Robinson. The tasteful new exterior styling was met with relief, if not exactly unanimous admiration. We would no longer need to explain, however, as in the eighth-gen era, how the Accord's dynamics compensate for a dowdy appearance.

Honda was going to call this the "Fifty Shades of Grey" Accord, but licensing could not be obtained, hence the Sport moniker.

Our 10Best evaluation found that Honda's move from control arms to a strut suspension in front had not diminished the Accord's standing as an enthusiast-grade appliance. We described the Accord's man- machine interface as “one big fluid loop,” a sentiment that would be reflected in comments throughout our long-term test. It was a car that would round off the frustrating edges of a commute- a low-heart-rate kind of sedan in traffic but an athlete on entrance ramps. Its chassis is so stable, its steering so responsive that it encourages the kind of hard driving that would ultimately lead to three separate trips to the dealer's lathe for brake resurfacing.