white98ls

That's kind of what I was thinking. The S2000 was impressive, but it only had to accomplish a couple of main goals: uniquely high performance and a price lower than the fancier, more-complex German rivals. In essence, it accomplished this through precise engineering and simplicity. It used an awesome 4-cyl to deliver the performance of a 6-cyl without the added weight and cost, and kept the rest of the car pretty simple and racy from the ground up. Sales were always going to be limited and it was only supposed to be sold for two years originally.

Designing a good Accord is a lot more challenging IMO. You have to cater to literally millions of people's varied tastes, match or exceed many competitors with the exact same objectives with regards to performance, handling, efficiency, safety, passenger space, features, comfort, trim options, and on and on, and keep prices essentially level with the competition, as buyers may well choose a Camry or Sonata based on a few hundred dollars. Plus maintain top reliability and low maintenance while delivering as much state-of-the-art tech as you can. There is a lot less room for error and a lot less budget to play with in order to create a superior product vs. far more competitors.

The fact that the new Accord appears to be almost unequivocally at the head of its class is pretty amazing given the challenges Honda is faced with. The fact that they still carve out models like the Sport and offering a manual with BOTH engines is a happy sign for enthusiasts, esp. when crossovers are picking up tons of sales and Ford is exiting the family sedan market altogether (rumor is no new Fusion in the U.S. at all).

mosesbotbol

Both the new Accord and Camry are quite impressive for the technology, design and price point.

cbehney

At least it's not that terrible commercial with the statues coming to life.

Saki GT

The most annoying Honda ad I've seen recently is a regional - "Don't settle" Honda civic ad. Search for it on Youtube..

The recent Acura ads I only find annoying because they have an NSX morphing into a truck, trying to convey that Acuras are sporty. Acura wants to set itself up as a performance line of vehicles these days, but they're just not imo - $40k fwd "sport" sedans don't sell and Acura has years of history showing this, but keeps doing it. I get marketing, but you need product to back it up.

Who knows, maybe the brand will finally start making performance cars that can compete, but it's not there today - it continues to amaze me that Honda brand is so strong and Acura has been withering for so long. Acura ads are annoying because they don't seem to ever connect with reality.

mosesbotbol

It took a while for Acura to clean up their designs. They're almost there, but it's much improved over 5-10 years ago.
Being a FWD based car company does not evoke performance even if FWD can go as fast around a track. Lotus proved you can drive FWD cars as quick 20+ years ago, but the consumer wants RWD... At least Volvo has enough of other features and engineering to offset the FWD based designs.

TheDonEffect

It's an ad that's maketing their bread and butter car. Why would I be offended? Should their slogan be the third best car we've ever built? So they wouldn't alienate the s2000 owners who bought their cars likely used at this point?

mosesbotbol

At least 10x the engineering goes into an Accord than the S2000. Getting the Accord wrong could cripple Honda while the S2000 is just a mosquito bite if they got it wrong.

ishtori5

Who says FWD sport sedans don't sell? in 2017 among Japanese luxury brands Acura outsells the Lexus counterparts who are RWD (IS, GS, LS). Infiniti fares better but not by much. Audi gained market share over BMW and Merc who were kings in RWD sport sedans sedans. In todays market, which wheels drives the car simply doesn't matter to 99% of the people.

Acura also sells AWD. Their torque vectoring system has been frequently praised in the industry and offers very good performance. They recently launched the sport hybrid AWD on the MDX and also the RLX. The AWD hybrid system on these are derivatives of the same technology from the NSX which is probably why you see the commercial where the NSX morphs into other cars or SUV. Also, the new RDX unveiled at the Detroit auto show has a brand new chassis that will be Acura only.

It is slow and coming but I think Honda is seriously trying to make Acura more distinct from Honda and I'm looking forward to it.

CosmosMpower

Ugly AF

Chibo

The turbo motors will be good for swapping eventually.

Offended is a very strong word