2019 Honda Accord - To CVT or Not To CVT...THAT Is The Question

When I was between jobs I'd taken a part time job working for a company that works with new car dealerships to move cars around. I'd be called to shuttle cars around at a dealership as well as between dealerships and even going to auction to pick up for sale what the dealership bought for later sale. For a car guy like me, the fringe benefit was the considerable wheel time with brand new cars. Fun. Well, that actually got old working exclusively with one dealership and for the most part, save for the time I went to the auction, one line of cars. In my case that was Honda's.

After several weeks schlepping Honda CR-V's, HR-V's, Accords, Civics and Ridegelines (I never got to drive a Pilot or Odyssey although I'm sure they ride and handle very similar to a Ridgeline), I have come to two conclusions. First, if you drive older vehicles like I do, you're missing out on a lot. Cars today, even the biggish Honda Ridgeline that I drove, are magnificent. Overall they perform at levels that would have been considered "sports car like" ten years ago not to mention twenty years ago. However, and I knew this beforehand but now I'm 100% convinced, my feelings about "constant velocity transmissions", or what are referred to as "CVT's" has been cemented; they are the bane of the modern, mostly Japanese, automobile. And depending on the application, Honda's turbocharged 1.5 liter 4 cylinder engine is simply over matched by just about everything they drop it into save for a Civic with a six speed manual.

That's a shame too considering how splendid most other aspects of the Hondas I drove where. Oh, and styling. Nothing Honda makes stirs my drink but that's beside the point. Folks who drive Honda's aren't buying them for their flashy looks. Anyway, oye, those damn CVT's.

I'd find it hard to believe that even the most clueless of drivers would not notice that some thing's askew with, for instance, a Honda Accord "EX-L" with a CV-T. The EX-L I drove yesterday was loaded to the front grill with every modern contraption available today on a car. Adaptive cruise control, lane change monitoring, emergency braking, 700 air bags and who knows what else. The one thing it wasn't equipped with was the optional 2.0 liter turbo engine making 252 horsepower and backed up with a god's green, earth, gear driven, 10 speed automatic. Funny how when it comes down to a vehicle that is supposed to be performance orientated they use a conventional transmission. And one with 10 forward gears. However, Honda uses a CVT in a 306 horsepower version of their venerable Civic Si so I believe Honda is eventually going to use CVT's across their entire lineup.

So, what is a CVT? Well, rather than bore you with a whole bunch of blah-bitty blah-bitty about pulley's and ratios and how CVT's differ from conventional transmissions with gears and fixed ratios, and you can read more about the damn things here, the idea behind a CVT is that they're supposed to enable a vehicle's engine to operate at peak efficiency all the time. Ok. I get that. But that comes at the expense of overall drivability. Especially in a heavy car that doesn't have enough motor; like the new Accord with the turbo 1.5.

For starters, you'd think a modern car with allegedly 192 horsepower would move off the line with some sense of urgency. Nope. Not an Accord with the 1.5 turbo and a CVT. It's almost as if the car's power train is distracted. "Oh, sorry. You want to move? Ummm, ok. Let's see...revs have to hit 3,000 rpm before we have enough torque to really go and...oh, here you go". That unresponsiveness is also accompanied by an engine drone, more like a moan, that if you didn't know better, makes the car sound and feel as though there's something wrong with the car.

There's an "S" and an "L" selection available on the shifter, I assumed they were for "sport" and "low" but putting the shifter in "S", for instance, while it did help improve "pick up" or what is referred to as "step in", RPM's jumped up more than 1,000 no matter how fast I drove the car. So much for efficiency. To get the performance you'd want your wallet gets slapped. This is progress?

On the open interstate and with the little 1.5 spinning freely, a stab of the gas does give you a pleasant push and the car passes eagerly but there's no mistaking the car for a Camaro SS - not that the Accord is supposed to be that but you get my point. As far as I'm concerned it's the mid 1970's all over again with still bloated hulks were saddled with performance robbing catalytic converters, low compression, smog gear saddled engines and microscopic axle ratios. Buyers back then had to be sold on "slow" being a good thing since a slow car was supposed to be good on gas.

Now, a car with a CVT with a really powerful engine, like the Nissan Altima I drove last Christmas, is a different story. That Altima moved with all the verve you'd expect out of a car with an absurdly good power to weight ratio and I was surprised to learn the car had a CVT. No surprise since Nissan finagled that CVT in the V-6 Altima to perform like a gear driven transmission. The CVT was seamless however, that overpowered red lump got only about 24 miles per gallon. Big deal. I have to ask again why so much time and effort is spent on CVT's in the first place. Especially with these crazy, eight, nine and ten speed automatics available today that really deliver on two attributes that years ago were mutually exclusive; performance and economy.

Mercifully, the Big Three for the most part have eschewed the use of CVT's. Ford used a CVT on their "Five Hundred" they peddled years ago, Jeep used one on older Compass' and Patriot's. Saturn used one has well on a smattering of makes and models. Domestics with CVT's have been (mostly) "captive" or rebadged imports.

I find that amazing seeing how for years now The Big Three have looked to Asia and Europe for hand holding on how to design, engineer and build automobiles. That's not a bad thing either but you'd think that CVT's would be coming to a domestic automobile near you in the very near future. But...there appears to be no sign of that. And that's a good thing as well.

As far as foreign makes and models go, well...to CVT or Not To CVT...THAT Is The Question. And I'll pass.