Tested: 1977 Honda Accord Changes the Game

From Car and Driver

From the May 1977 issue of Car and Driver.

Everybody likes the Honda Accord. Each cynical road-tester we set adrift with the car returned a hopeless Accord fanatic. Even now, legions of Honda Accord zealots are touting it as everything from the ultimate urban-car to the super-est super coupe. So let's cut loose and admit that the Accord is both a stunning achievement and, at a sticker price just over $4000, a stupefying value. Why, the Accord is the very thing we've been looking for.

At first, the Accord might seem like just an­other transportation module cast in the famil­iar mold of front-wheel drive and hatchback, a Honda Civic with a thyroid condition. But a long list of standard features belies its heri­tage. Indeed, the long list of equipment fea­tured on the Accord might have been pinched from a far more elaborate and expensive automobile: five-speed transmission, rack-and-pinion steering, radial tires, AM/FM radio, tricky side-window defrosters and a hatch­back window wiper.

This grab bag of obligatory standard equip­ment may merely be some wily Honda sales strategy, but it seems to demonstrate an eminently sensible approach to automobile construction. In one mad stroke, Honda has invented an automobile that appeals not only to the vast middle ground of car-buyers, but to both extremes of the spectrum as well, the rationalists and the sports. Stripped-down, base-price cars, though the most rational of items, tend to attract a limited audience will­ing to endure bare-metal interior finishes and rubber floor mats. While the Accord's size and gas mileage are wholeheartedly rational, Honda refused to cripple the Accord's list of standard features in order to provide an affordable price. Building only one Accord mod­el simplifies the firm's task, just as it did Henry Ford's, but Honda then broadened the car's appeal by installing all the luxuries.