2017 Honda Accord - Dire Straits

 

 

Just one look at a 2017 Honda Accord sedan and you can see why the "three box", four door sedan is dying a slow but steady death. I mean, with as many exciting looking cross overs on the market as there are today, this is what they come out with?  Does it not look as through it was styled by the same yahoos who penned the 2006 Chrysler Sebring sedan?

 

 

In fairness, the Honda Accord sedan has never been about jaw dropping, eye popping sheet metal but still, given how all around fantastic the car actually is, you'd think Honda stylists could have come up with something a bit more interesting than this. Gotta hand it to Mazda for attempting to at least keep things interesting in the garage with a bevy of progressive looking sedan designs that sorta-kinda combine a cross over design ethos with a sedan.  I didn't say I like them but I applaud their efforts.

 

 

Inside things are little better but even here things are as staid and generic as it gets these days. Swap the H logo on the steering wheel for a bowtie and no one wouldn't think this wasn't the new (and oh god so homely) Malibu or the next Impala.

 

 

I more than understand how difficult it is to keep reinventing the same thing every four to five years. In broadcasting, we have to reinvent ourselves every day; the challenge is in keeping it interesting within certain guidelines. And in broadcasting today we face the similar challenge of ever new, different and exciting choices for people to be entertained and informed by. Was the 2016 Accord, our subject is a 2017, really Honda's best attempt to keep things interesting looking within even their own self imposed conservative guidelines. 

 

 

The future of the three box, four door sedan is dire and it honestly has more to do with the rise in sales of cross overs than anything that manufacturers are doing wrong with sedans. CUV's are so different from sedans that there's nothing sedan designers and engineers could have done to offset their rise in popularity. Although, boring appliances like this Accord sedan certainly don't help matters. Can manufacturers come out with a sedan that combines everything that buyers want in a cross over? Honda tried that with the late great Crosstour that went over as well as selling ice cream to Eskimos. Again, the sedan as we have known it to be, is in dire straits.