In some families, greatness is inherited
Alistair Cooke would have called it a quintessentially
American success story: Two foreigners land on our shores from nations once
defeated and destitute to seek fortunes in the land of their conqueror. Lofted
to unimaginable heights by the updraft of postwar prosperity, they become
business empires unto themselves.
The Accord is
America’s Honda
How much should we read into the common narratives of Honda
and BMW? Both are smaller firms relative to the giants of the industry, yet
they have remained steadfastly independent as others have buddied up into
global conglomerates. Both companies have an inordinately strong sense of
identity, rooted in engineering and nurtured at some point in their histories
by a single patron or family. Both make motorcycles. And after nearly four
decades of continuous success in America, the BMW 3-series and the Honda Accord
are themselves automotive dynasties.
The Honda Accord is perfectly named, the result of a timely
accord between Japan’s burgeoning industrial might and America’s rapidly
changing post-OPEC market. The first Accord in 1976 was a huge stride from the
series of mostly obscure subcompacts that preceded it. Building on the Civic
CVCC, the Accord was a polished and precision Japanese instrument in the mold
of a contemporary Sony tape recorder or a Nikon camera, and it threw Detroit’s
complacency into glaringly sharp relief.
BMW is, at heart,
a small-car company
Even so, the Accord is America’s Honda. We own it, and it is
ours. It was the first Japanese car to be assembled here – indeed, in the
middle of America, in Rust-Belt Ohio – and it grew and morphed with the needs
of its prime constituency, the baby-boom generation. It even contributed to an
American-style scandal in the 1980s when the demand for Hondas far out-stripped
the supply and the company’s U.S. sales managers skimmed millions in bribes and
kickbacks from dealers desperate for stock.
Accord returned to
form as a slightly smaller but still unapologetically practical vehicle with
acres of glass for visibility
On the showroom floor, the Accord displayed engineering
elegance that anybody could appreciate, from the perfectly placed cabin
controls and the painstakingly efficient packaging to the meticulously routed hoses
and cables under the hood. In motion, an Accord was light, thrifty, fun,
practical, and incredibly durable. Honda sealed its reputation with the Accord,
and the car has consistently adhered to its core values through nine
generations.
There isn’t a bad apple in the bushel, but the 1994-1997
fifth-gen is a particularly warm memory. The sheetmetal was wrapped tightly,
the hoodline sloping down to two illuminated slits for headlights. It was the
first Accord with a V-6 and the first with panache as well as purpose. It drove
like it, immediately rendering all other cars in its class contenders for
second place. Since then, the Accord has grown and matured – undoubtedly too
much in the just-retired eighth generation. But the redesigned 2013 Accord
returned to form as a slightly smaller but still unapologetically practical
vehicle with acres of glass for visibility, a capacious cabin, and that same
spry lightness to its controls and movements. Once again, the Accord became the
standard by which the largest and most competitive class of passenger cars is
judged.
