On the road with the Honda Accord

Honda Phils lent me one of their Honda Accord to test out and told me I can take it out of town, we headed out to see how fast it can go on the highway and quickly drove it up north.

They also told me I can go and stay at the Holiday Inn at Clark so we headed there as soon as we can. Nothing beats the clean even roads of NLEX for a test drive.

The Honda Accord is the car company’s top of the line executive sedan and the one we used was the 3.5 liter V6 i-VTEC variant. Prior to this, the biggest engine I’ve driven was a 2.0 so the 3.5 is really huge leap (it’s like driving a sedan with twin engines on the hood).

The car is listed at around Php2,050,000USD 34,932INR 2,961,430EUR 33,272CNY 254,405 and this makes it the most expensive item I’ve ever tested and reviewed so far. At the same time, there’s this nagging feeling I’d always need to be very careful with driving this car.

While we tried our best to hit 200kmph even for a few seconds, we could not go past 180kmph due to the traffic at NLEX on a Friday night (the speedometer indicates 260kmph as the top speed). The Accord also has this EconoMode where it automatically switches between 6-cylinders to 3-cylinders when cruising thereby saving on fuel.

I’ll have to drive it around some more but so far, having driven the Accord 3.5 V6 in the last 24 hours already changed my perception of the car. I’m no car expert but, so far, I’m impressed. More on this next week when I get to play with all the built-in dashboard control technology.

P.S. If you’re a Honda owner of fan, you can follow them on Twitter at @hondaphil

Disclosure: Honda Phils covered our hotel and meals plus filling the gas up to the brim.