From the April 1988 issue of Car and Driver.
By now, it should be no surprise to anybody that Honda doesn't make many mistakes. Each new generation of Hondas sets a higher standard for the rest of the world's carmakers to emulate—though often they just sit there astonished by how fast the company can reskin, revamp, and reengineer entire lineups. Honda seems to accomplish such miracles with a relentlessly casual efficiency. It doesn't make a giant deal about anything. The new or revised hardware seems to roll off the line as magically as if it were assembled by guys wearing pointy hats and waving chrome-tipped wands.
This will to win, to outdo itself again and again, has brought Honda to its present happy circumstance of being able to export cars from the U.S. to Japan. This is part of Honda's ultimate goal: ruling the universe. The new plant it's building at its recently purchased Transportation Research Center in Ohio will go into operation next year. By 1991, its U.S.-built cars will have 75 percent domestic content, and it expects to export 70,000 of them to Japan and Europe annually. By that time Honda's total investment in U.S. facilities should total $1.7 billion. Clearly, this is a company with its telephoto focused on infinity. Instead of reacting to possible scenarios of tomorrow's market, it's creating the scenarios to which everyone else will have to react.
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The new Accord Coupe, built in Marysville, Ohio, is the first Honda manufactured exclusively in the U.S. It will also be the first domestic-built Honda to be sold on the West Coast and the first to touch down on the home soil of Japan. In one sense, seen merely as a two-door version of the ever-popular Accord, the Coupe is a small, perhaps inevitable step in the development of the lineup. In another sense, it's a milestone car: one that must not only satisfy the highly elevated expectations of American Honda fans but impress the folks back home as well.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to spend as much time with the car as we wished—our test sample was one of only two pre-production Accord Coupes on the planet—nor were we allowed to mount our fifth wheel on it. Even so, our initial impression is overwhelmingly positive. The car is a sweetheart.
The three-box, two-door Coupe shares its 102.4-inch platform with the Accord four-door sedans and three-door hatchbacks and is available in either DX or LX-i trim. The base DX is powered by a single-overhead-cam, twelve-valve, 1955 cc four-cylinder engine fitted with a two-barrel carburetor; it produces 98 hp at 5500 rpm. In LX-i trim, the same engine is equipped with fuel injection, a dual-stage intake manifold, a revised camshaft, a higher compression ratio, and a four-into-two-into-one exhaust manifold; the results are 120 hp at 5800 rpm and a torque increase from 109 to 122 pound-feet. A further distinction for the LX-i is a larger wheel-and-tire package: 195/60HR-14 Michelin MXVs on fourteen-inch wheels, versus 70-series rubber of various manufacture on thirteen-inch wheels. The entire Accord line benefits from revised suspension calibrations and larger anti-roll bars this year.
The Accord Coupe shares its interior design with the three- and four-door models. One of the hallmarks of Honda interiors is their ability to make you feel at home from the moment you slide behind the wheel. Jump into the Coupe, fire up the engine, and within a few heartbeats you feel as if you've known this cabin all your life. The front seats are well bolstered for hard driving and comfortable for easy cruising. The thick, four-spoke wheel connects you to speed-sensitive power steering that is feather-light at parking speeds but offers satisfying resistance at higher speeds. The system also offers excellent on-center feel and never censors the message from the tires. The shifter is as slick as Teflon, like that of every other Honda in recent memory. It makes you wonder what Honda knows about shift mechanisms that some of the other domestic makers can't seem to fathom.
Unlike many two-doors that are based on three- or four-door models, the Accord Coupe doesn't ask you to give up much interior space in exchange for it sleeker styling. Its front seat offers as much legroom and hiproom as the four-door, though about an inch less headroom, and the largest sacrifice in the rear is about an inch less legroom. New this year in all Accords are grab handles above all the passenger doors. That's so they have something to hold on to while they smack you in the back of the head and tell you to slow the hell down. Like the four-door model, the LX-i Coupe features a lockable, forward-tilting rear seatback. The lock restricts access to the trunk in case you're carrying stuff like blackmail-quality eight-by-ten glossies of presidential candidates with their "advisers."
Honda's distinctive low-cowl design gives the driver a formula racer's view of the road. Add that command position to the high-revving engine, perfectly arranged pedals, and the effortless shifter and you've got all the ingredients needed to turn even the meekest left-lane bandit into Stirling Moss. Well, maybe not Stirling Moss—but if you're already disposed in that direction, the Accord Coupe will turn you into cop bait by second gear. It blasts along with so little effort that you're always doing ten miles an hour faster than you think you are.
In that sense, and in many others, Accords are like the tiny cars that Mercedes never built. An Accord at 80 mph is as composed as most cars at 40. It tracks as well as anything around, needles its way through the slipstream like an F-16, and limits its demands on the driver to keeping oil in the engine and fuel in the tank.
If all of the above reminds you of every other Honda report you've read in these pages, that's because we've yet to see a Honda that wasn't a solid-gold winner. With the exception of the Prelude with the four-wheel-steering option, we've never driven one that deserved anything less than unqualified praise. The Accord Coupe, in this respect, is no news at all: it simply reinforces our opinion that Honda doesn't know how to build a bad car.
Specifications
Specifications
1988 Honda Accord Coupe
Vehicle Type: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 2-door coupe
PRICE
As Tested: $15,000 (est)
ENGINE
inline-4, iron block and aluminum head, port fuel injection
Displacement: 119 in3, 1955 cm3
Power: 120 hp @ 5800 rpm
TRANSMISSION
5-speed manual
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 102.4 in
Length: 179.1 in
Curb Weight (C/D est): 2650 lb
EPA FUEL ECONOMY [(C/D EST)]
City: 25 mpg
