2014 Honda Accord 0 60 4 Cylinder
EDITOR WES RAYNAL: What's this, a key?! And one you actually have to put into the ignition! And turn it! And gears you have to engage yourself! How charmingly old school.
Seriously, the Honda Accord remains the midsize-sedan gold standard, or damn close to it (yes, I like the Mazda 6, too). As dull as a midsize sedan can be, I'd argue those two are the least boring.
The Accord Sport sedan looks duller than the 6, but is still, after all these years, one sweet driver. The interior is roomy, well built, comfortable and the controls fairly intuitive once you learn your way around. The chassis is on the freakin' money: A good, firm ride, but it soaks up potholes and road imperfections beautifully. The 2.4-liter four: Is there a smoother four in the biz than a Honda four? I submit there isn't. No it's not an NHRA dragster, but power is good and there's nary a hiccup to redline. The steering is light and direct, the six-speed as crisp as you'd expect from Honda.
And the price -- I say the car is a steal. According to honda.com, for $24K you get a power seat, backup camera, dual-zone automatic climate control, side curtain airbags, a power driver's seat, Pandora, USB connect and Bluetooth. Wowsers.
The Accord is the second-best-selling passenger car so far this year, about 40,000 sales behind the Toyota Camry. Accord sales are up about 2,000 this year compared to last. Those two are miles ahead of any other midsize sedan on sale.
The 2014 Honda Accord Sport sedan is just one helluva good car and a really good car for the money.
DIGITAL EDITOR ANDREW STOY: Not to disparage the Accord Sport sedan -- it's a really nice-driving vehicle, and I'll come back to that -- but I think Wes considers the Accord a lot of car for the money simply because we so rarely get vehicles through here that aren't totally loaded. A $25K midsize sedan seems like a bargain until you realize that's pretty much where Accord and all its competitors land with their midline trim levels, and most offer about the same equipment, horsepower and driving experience. "A roomy midsize sedan with cloth seats and a stick shift, all for $25K? Who knew!" Pretty much everyone actually buying cars, that's who. We journos get tunnel vision after a while and start assuming every Accord sold is an EX-L V6, so I'm glad Honda has sent us a real mass-market car…except for the stick shift, of course.
Anyway, back to the 2014 Honda Accord Sport sedan. The "Sport" moniker actually means "not the base level," and mostly consists of sport appearance touches rather than any kind of performance boost. Alloy wheels, a power driver's seat, fog lights and a handful of other touches dress up the low-rent Accord LX, but they also add about $1,700 to the base price. Don't expect a significant difference in the cabin feel -- while materials are generally high quality with good fit and finish, there's still plenty of hard, black plastic to remind you why your monthly payment is so low.
A Honda I4/stick shift powertrain has been a beautiful thing for decades now, and that remains the case on our Accord Sport. As the numbers suggest, this isn't a rocket ship, but it's more than adequate for the average Accord buyer. More importantly, the light clutch, zingy engine and downright fun shifter make this thing a delight to wheel around, even in traffic. Sure, the brakes, chassis tuning and steering are designed around the 50th percentile driver, but one gets the sense that Honda engineers (and Mazda engineers, for that matter) sneak into the office late at night and amp up all the specs a notch or two before the car is signed off on. It's just a more connected experience than a Toyota Camry, Nissan Altima or Ford Fusion.
As mentioned earlier, I don't consider the Accord Sport a particular bargain simply because it's priced about the same as all its competition; within the Accord lineup most buyers, even those who'd like a manual transmission, will step up one notch to the EX and get goodies like a power moonroof and Honda's brilliant LaneWatch system for only about $1,200 more.
There's your bargain, but there's no denying that whatever trim level you choose, the Accord is an extraordinarily good midsize sedan.
I just don't know what to say.
OK, how about, yippee! What a delight to find something relatively fun to drive in something so practical. I just happened to step right out of a Subaru BRZ and into this, and while there was a huge gulf between the two cars, they both had six-speed manuals. The BRZ was loud and let you feel and hear every surface blip you drove over. It was great fun but not at all really comfortable if you were going to be in it all day. The kids in the carpool complained, actually asking, "When is this car scheduled to go back?" There was no such whimpering in the Accord. "I like this car," one said unsolicited, as if one of those creepy Helpful Honda guys had paid him lunch money to say it.
I liked driving it, too. The throws on the six-speed are really short, not Mazda MX-5 Miata/BRZ short, but shorter than probably anything out there this big. There was nothing vague about where each gear was, either, though I wouldn't use the terrible automotive writer hack cliché, "snick-snick" when describing shifter operation. While not really being what you'd call sporty to drive, it was still fun. It's one of those cars with a fair amount of body lean, but once you know how much, you adjust your driving style accordingly (ha!) and then take on the turns.
And power? I actually had to pop the hood and look to make sure it was a four-cylinder. All that engine R&D Honda has been doing over the last 50 years or so is evident in this engine. It's a 2.4-liter direct-injected i-Vtec four-cylinder that produces 189 hp in our Accord Sport sedan (or a mere 185 hp in other Accord four bangers). That engine really launches the car. Maybe my expectations were low, but I was surprised by how quickly it left the line. The manual trans meant you could get off the line as fast as you were able to operate the clutch. It was up to you. Published 0-60 figures are in the sixes. Who needs that 278-hp 3.5-liter Vtec V6 with variable cylinder management? Not me. Especially because the V6 comes with automatic transmission only. No manual.
Granted, the styling is pretty bland, almost Toyota Camry-like, though the last Camry with a manual transmission can be found in sedimentary layers of sandstone in the museum of natural history, next to the fossilized ducks. Accord and Camry have been battling it out for sales supremacy for decades. While Camry has the most numbers, Honda says Accord has the most retail sales (as opposed to sales figures that include less-profitable rental car fleets).
The new 2015 Accord, with some options shuffling for the new model year, went on sale the week before we got ours. Sticker price for the Accord Sport sedan starts at an entirely reasonable $24,655. You can get into an Accord LX for $22,895. There are many competitors available in this segment, all priced almost exactly the same, with a little juggling around for options. If I was buying in this segment, though, I'd get this car.
ASSOCIATE WEST COAST EDITOR BLAKE Z. RONG: If it's said that a manual transmission can liven up any car, no matter how boring, then the six-speed transmission sprouting from the center of this 2014 Honda Accord Sport sedan, from a shifter shaped like the end of a baton, might be enough to turn it into a cut-rate sports sedan -- a poor man's Acura TLX, which, come to think of it, would make for a very poor man indeed.
Honda imbued the Accord Sport with dual exhaust tips and rear SPORT badging the approximate size of what they used to announce the Watergate scandal. You wanna call it a Sport model, Honda? OK, I'll drive it like a Sport model. I took it on Piuma, Kanan Dume, Malibu Canyon Road. I drove 50 miles down Mulholland, each way. Cars pulled over for me, gobsmacked that one of the best-selling midsize sedans in America could ever hassle their Audis. And what I learned was that the Accord is so light on its feet, it feels like it's shrinking around you more like a Civic than a big ol' sedan -- an illusion provided by its incredibly light steering, which despite being slightly overboosted, still provides decent feedback. Its shifter and clutch are things of beauty: smooth, precise, but still light, perfect around town, with smooth and willing engagement. If you're the father of a teenage boy, you could do no worse than by teaching him how to drive stick in the family car. Then, you could send him off to prom in it -- knowing that he doesn't have the horsepower to get in too much trouble.
That's because the Accord Sport isn't a quick car, but it somehow attains speeds with imperceptibility. Accelerate on a freeway and there won't be a sensation of speed at all -- yet, look at the needle, it's moving! The damndest thing! The only hint that you've gone from one speed to the next is the fact that some car doing 10 under the limit in front of you is rapidly filling up your windshield. Would you know it, it's also an Accord.
Yes, of course, it's still an Accord, a big boring family car, and would you know, it is in fact not a sports sedan. The suspension is comfortable, yes, but far too squishy -- I thought I was going to bounce my way into the opposite lane. And annoyingly, the engine languishes on the revs, spinning uselessly away from one gear to the next.
Ultimately, I draw the same conclusion from this car as I did the Mazda 6: an interesting exercise in midsize sedan liveliness, just slightly more successful. Who wants a midsize family sedan with a manual? Weirdo freaks, that's who. It's worth noting that the Accord concentrates its entire sporting pretense into an offshoot trim, while the Mazda 6 devotes its entire lineup to it. If Honda really wanted to build a sporty Accord, they'd tighten up the suspension with some HPD goodies, then market it as the grown-up's Civic Si. Visions of Euro Accord Rs -- and the dearly departed Acura TSX -- will subsequently dance around the minds of Honda snobs.
Vehicle Model Information
BASE PRICE: $24,505
AS TESTED PRICE: $24,505
POWERTRAIN: 2.4-liter I4; FWD, six-speed manual
OUTPUT: 189 hp @ 6,400 rpm, 182 lb-ft @ 3,900 rpm
CURB WEIGHT: 3,276 lb
FUEL ECONOMY: 24/34/27 mpg
FUEL ECONOMY: 27.2 mpg
OPTIONS: None
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2014 Honda Accord 0 60 4 Cylinder
Source: https://www.autoweek.com/drives/a1907031/2014-honda-accord-sport-sedan-review-notes/
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