Bummer! Honda Discontinues the Accord Hybrid
Jun 5th, 2007 by Lynne
I read today that Honda will stop producing Accord Hybrids as of the 2007 model year. I did my part to help sales — I bought TWO of them, one in March 2005 and another in August 2005 when the first one was squashed between two 18-wheelers on I-20.
Yes, I actually walked away from that crash without a scratch. The front of the car was almost completely crushed and so was the back. The rear glass was broken out, and the impact also cracked the glass in the windows in the back seat. But other than that, the passenger compartment was largely untouched. Damn right I bought another one! :-)
The Accord Hybrid is my favorite car, ever. It’s got a sweet V6 with an electric assist that makes the car faster than any other Accord on the road, and the other hybrid features push the gas mileage to a very decent 30-something — even higher if my less lead-footed husband is driving. It has a built-in navigation system, XM radio, leather seats (heated in front), and anti-lock brakes.
I’m seriously bummed that I can’t plan on upgrading to an 80-mpg version of my favorite car whenever I wear this one out.
Boo! Your car is great, I wanted one myself after riding in it (and hearing the amazing tale of the two-semi sandwich your post mentions). It’s a shame they won’t be available new any more.
OMG, I’ve always been afraid that would happen to me. You are so lucky to walk away from it.
Alice
I admire Honda for doing something like what Ford did and putting the hybrid option on a popular model with mediocre mileage first. After all, a popular car that gets 35MPG instead of 30MPG is going to make more of a difference than a niche car that gets 50MPG instead of 35MPG.
Unfortunately, it looks like the hybrids will actually sell better in the niche, because people are looking for high-mileage cars, and people who are looking for high-mileage cars are looking at hybrids. So they’re keeping the ultra-high-mileage Civic hybrid.
Personally, a hybrid (or better, diesel) Scion xB would hit the spot for me. I wouldn’t rule out a Civic hybrid, though. At least that’s on the market.
we test drove the Honda Hybrid but ended up buying a Saturn Aura Hybrid for several reasons. . . the main being that we can get two car seats and a teenager in the back of the Saturn and not in the Honda (something about the seat anchor configuration). But I must admit, the Honda was one sweet ride!
Ericka - Wow. I read that, and I thought “she must have meant the Vue Green Line.” But it seems like you’d know, since it’s kind of hard to confuse them, so I checked Saturn’s site and sure enough, they have one now.
Oooo. Lust. The Auras are nice, I just didn’t like the MPG much. It’s still not as good as my little SL, but it’s almost there and it’s a much nicer car.
Must… not… lust… for… new… car… current… one… paid…for… works… fine…… augh!
Hi, Kerry! Glad you liked the car. :-) You’re welcome to drive it, next time y’all are in town!
Alice, I’ve always been afraid of the same thing, and when I saw that giant orange hood bearing down on me, I thought my luck had run out for sure.
Oddly enough, the formula for calculating momentum popped into my head right before the truck hit my car. I hadn’t thought about p=mv in YEARS.
Hey, James! Well, Scion IS a Toyota product, and they’ve got a strong commitment to hybridizing all their vehicles by 2010. You may be in luck!
Hi, Ericka! I hadn’t heard about that particular Saturn. We’ll definitely check it out.
I didn’t know you were a fellow hybrid owner! :-)
Can your drums fit into the Aura, James? :-) That’s the big question, right?
First, in case I haven’t mentioned it: The Accord gets major props for holding the passenger cage up against the force of an oncoming semi.
My drums fit into my SL with the front passenger seat free. The SL is also a sedan, smaller in every dimension than the Aura. I’m not at all worried about the drums fitting in the Aura.
It’s not a hauler in the sense that the Scion xB or the Saturn Vue Green Line or the VW Passat TDI Wagon would be, but I don’t really need that much. The most difficult thing to deal with is the bass drum, which in the worst case takes up the front passenger seat of e.g. a Subaru Justy.
A hybrid xB would make that car significantly more attractive. Right now it gets worse gas mileage than the plain-Jane Aura, which has 100 more horsepower. That’s kind of silly. I suppose the box shape doesn’t exactly slip through the wind, but still…
I got passed by a Saturn hybrid SUV last month in South Carolina. I’d heard that there would be such a beast, but wasn’t aware they were on the road already.
I wouldn’t have noticed it but for the funny logo on the back end, as with Ford’s Escape. With hybrids proliferating, there are more of these stealth models around that don’t “look funny.” My Prius still turns the occasional head (not necessarily in a good way), especially when I pass a pedestrian with the engine off.
I’ve heard that the Civic’s safety scores are at least as good as the Accord’s, James, but I don’t know if they tested it under really crazy conditions. I’m inclined to think the Civic would do well, too, but there’s definitely something to be said for having a slightly larger car in those circumstances.
I keep teasing John that my next car is a hybrid Cayenne. :-) If some extremely difficult conditions are met (okay, next to impossible), then it might happen!
John, the Vue Green Line has been on the road for two years now. :-) It was the first of Saturn’s vehicles to go hybrid, and the first of anyone’s SUVs.
It’s actually a sweet vehicle, if you don’t mind the fact that it’s built on a truck (ladder) frame and drives accordingly.
The VUE, then, is a glaring omission by the Hybrid Center http://www.hybridcenter.org/ folks, who left it out of their nifty front-page comparison machine, though it claims the best highway mileage (32) of *any* SUV. They seem down on GM for implementing low-tech “weak” hybrid solutions http://www.hybridcenter.org/hybrid-watchdog-whats-in-a-name.html , though I think there’s a market for cheaper, if less effective, gas-saving vehicles.
The VUE works like Honda’s hybrid fleet, shutting down the gas engine at full stops, though incapable of doing so in motion as Toyota’s do.
They probably wrote it off after GM’s hybrid big trucks, which were just as lame as that link suggests. The Vue gets about 30% better mileage than its non-hybrid fellows.
The Aura Green Line is basically the Vue’s whole hybrid powerplant stuffed into the sedan.
I like Saturn/GM’s emphasis on simple and inexpensive, largely because I don’t like spending lots of money on cars, and partly just because simpler systems are less likely to go wrong over time, all else being equal.