Honda Hates Me So Much They Gave Raphael Orlove My Car, But Nicer

I don't know how I didn't know about this one --- Jalopnik's Raphael Orlove took out the heavy-duty trowel and laid on the irony pretty thick in a March article about the Accord Coupe. The point he makes is one I've been hammering for a while now --- I called it the "Descolada" theory.

In my review of the Accord Ex-L I wrote that

The Accord made headway in the Seventies as a dynamic proposition, a little low-cowled race car in a vast field of 204-inch personal luxury coupes. It was so good at replacing those bigger American cars that it eventually became a bigger American car. (See: “The Descolada”, Speaker For The Dead by Card, Orson Scott.) In a perfect world, the 2014 Accord would combine the thrift of the 1976 original with the effortless thrust of a 403-powered ’77 Cutlass Supreme Brougham.

Raphael notes the same thing in his Accord review. I also like his photographs much better than I like any shots I've ever taken of my Accord. The funny thing is that his review car has the one option you can get on an Accord EX-L V6 manual: the navigation system. I refused to pay nearly two thousand dollars for something that comes free with a phone. Insofar as this is the first daily-driven car without navigation I've had since I put an Alpine IVA-D900 in my Disco 4.6 in 2003, however, I'm annoyed every single freaking time I can't get an instant map of my surroundings by pressing a button.

Anyway, if you want to see some nice pictures of an Accord and read one of the better writers in the business all at once, check R.O. out.