Accord Coupe a rare outlier
Few models compete with this Honda coupe, which is a spin on a trusty family sedan
The Honda Accord Coupe is part of a dying breed. Front-wheel drive, V6-powered, sedan-based coupes just don’t exist anymore.
It’s pretty much the only one left, and not alot of consumers will buy it, but it doesn’t mean that drivers shouldn’t buy it.
This coupe is more than just a sedan minus two doors. The interesting thing about the Accord Coupe is how different it feels from the sedan.
Where the sedan puts an emphasis on comfort, it’s very obvious the coupe is geared more toward the sporty side of things.
How it drives
The steering has much more weight to it, the suspension feels a bit tighter (though not sports car stiff ), the throttle is more responsive, and then there’s a low howl that reminds you there’s a revy 3.5-litre V6 under the hood with 278 horsepower and 252 lb-ft. of torque.
The coupe is quicker than you’d expect, which kind of feels uncharacteristic in a Honda these days, but I’m not complaining.
The combination of a V6 with a proper six-speed automatic is a good fit for the sportier coupe.
Although the CVT isn’t a bad transmission, this six-speed unit really helps the car feel more responsive.
Power delivery is smooth, the torque curve is linear and the driving dynamics are entirely predictable and very comfortable.
It’s sporty, but not a sports car Although it has a bit of a different personality than the regular Accord, its front-wheel-drive sedan underpinnings really become obvious when you drive it harder than normal. There’s also still a fair bit of torque steer, but it has improved dramatically over the previous-generation Accord Coupe. There’s a lot of torque heading to the front wheels, so it’s really easy for the front tires to break free with a hard start or aggressive cornering. There is also a lot of body movement in corners, but again, it’s not that bad and no one is buying this car to be a drift king.
The coupe is very livable
The Accord Coupe is surprisingly livable for a coupe: it has a big trunk, you don’t have to be very flexible to fit into the back seats, and it comes with almost every technology you could want.
The coupe is available with Honda’s full suite of safety tech and my favourite feature, which is the Lane Watch camera that shows you what’s in your blind spot. The lane keep and automatic collision alert systems are still too aggressive to be truly useful, so I usually turn them off, but the adaptive cruise control works well.
Inside, the layout is still weird with the two-screen setup, but if you configure it properly, it can actually be quite useful. The rest makes sense: a user-friendly layout and no mystery buttons.
The verdict
Although the Honda Accord Coupe is sportier than the sedan, it’s definitely not a sports car. But with composed driving dynamics, a load of useful technology and a clean, sophisticated style, there are hardly any downsides for this car that will ring in at $35,990 fully loaded. And one thing that makes the car even sweeter is that topline models like this one are still available with a sixspeed manual.