By Ted Melton.
It was at around half past one in the morning of a sultry summer night that I awoke for the first time in my life to a rising sense of panic. Normally a sound sleeper, tonight something had disturbed my quiet slumber and was urgently trying to gain my attention. A strange sense of motion overcame me and as I blinked open my eyes and the world swam lazily into focus, about 4 million things all suddenly clamoured to take precedence amongst the list of things my limited ability to concentrate was suddenly tasked with.
As is always the case with such things, my perceptions (running initially on autopilot) jumped straight into overdrive and so time was already crawling along like a depressed tortoise and my body was taking evasive action by the time my somewhat discombobulated sense of self had taken stock of circumstances. The list of questions that my freshly awoken mind had deigned to ask had some worrying answers:
Q:"Where am I?"
A: "In the car, old chap."
Q:"When is it?"
A: "Very late, or very early, if you prefer."
Q: "What's going on?"
A: "I'm afraid you're about to crash and die in a simply horrible way, old son. Sorry about that. How about a quick montage of your life so far for old-times sake?"
Now all of this took approximately 0.0000000003 seconds to occur, which is pretty quick I'm sure you'll agree, but not nearly so quick as my hands and feet for the next second or two. Or perhaps it was an entire lifetime. Hard to tell. Certainly felt like it. But as I fought to bring the tail back into line in time to spear around a near-hairpin at upwards of 50 miles an hour, the events of the evening up until now came piling forwards. Images heaped upon more images of the day thus far achieved, plus a few more slightly hazier pictures of the drive which had brought me here, to the brink of my demise on this remote country road.
12 weeks previous to this I was also in desperate circumstances. Having melted a pair of Peugeot 405 turbo-diesels in the space of 6 weeks I was running decidedly low on funds and was in need of a set of wheels (and associated miscellany) for the minimum of outlay. This came in the form of a sub £300, 1996, 2.0 litre, VTEC Honda Accord. Finished in English-summertime grey and with four tyres from four different manufacturers, all of them alien in name to me and, I suspect, the entire western hemisphere of the globe. (I seem to recall one of them was made by a company called, and I kid you not, Wankrat. I assume I'm not the only one to find this hilarious.) Being a conscientious sort I immediately had them and the rest of the vehicle checked for age, wear and imminent explosion. Surprised but satisfied, I left the mechanic with a clean bill of health and some overtime hours at the factory to catch up on.
Cut to a couple of weeks later and now I have been lulled into a false sense of security. Each night as I wend my way home I play my usual game of "let's beat my personal best" and I am delighted and surprised by the results. The car is in many ways a marvel. Comfortable, spacious and quiet, with not unreasonable equipment levels I am somewhat smitten by my humdrum Japanese transport. Yes, the interior is less interesting than a packet of plain white rice, and yes the steering is as uncommunicative as an autistic grapefruit but for all it's mundanity it is actually a very capable machine. Blessed as it is with passive rear-wheel steering and the fabled VTEC unit, she can rev like a chainsaw and turn on any denomination of small-change you care to mention. It's the way it does it though that is really worthy of note. You see there is nothing you can do to make things get even slightly hectic. With any other front-drive saloon (with the possible exception of the early models of Ford Mondeo) when you start to get near the edge of the handling envelope things start to become wayward. Where a Passat or Avensis would lurch, duck down and understeer through a sharp negative-camber bend, and any sudden lift would result in the back end spearing out wildly, the front of the Accord will pitch willingly over in the appropriate direction and the back will slide gently out to the limit of the tyres' grip and then float gently around pretty much everything. Hard braking or acceleration will not produce the ubiquitous boating effects of other 1100-1500kg saloons, instead the ride remains taut and supple. Far more so than almost any other car of its type and cost.
The figures for a car such as this are rarely going to set the world on fire but I always wonder why performance figures in the real world always seem to be slightly better than those officially quoted, especially when talking about cars lower in the range. I'm not for a moment suggesting a conspiracy but it seems almost too coincidental that the smallest cars I have driven have the biggest discrepancy between the quotes and the real-world times and how they are never in the car's favour. This aside I can confirm the Honda I was testing could reach a top speed of an indicated "150 mph" (nearly) having galloped past 60 in precisely 8-and-a-bit seconds. Compared to virtually any other car I have ever bought, in terms of power-to-price ratio this was a bit of a winner. Where a modern supercar will cost upwards of £1000 per mph achieved, the little Honda can achieve e-type performance for a frankly poverty-stricken £2 per mph. I can also guarantee that when you are travelling down an Autobahn at that sort of chat, with Polish lorries testing your £30 brake pads every 5 minutes, you're every bit as alive as when you're touching 185 in a Porker. Take it off the highway and onto more of a low-way, if you get my meaning, and the thing will maintain its rev-augmented velocities around corners that would make a hatchback-driver pause for thought.
I think I know the secret. And like all the best secrets, the really high-security ones, it's really, really, really boring. Look, here's the scoop, the big secret, the thing that makes it all click into place.....the Honda Accord circa 1996 is a well designed car with a novel suspension system and an efficient engine.....See what I mean? Not exactly ground breaking is it? But actually it's way more important than you are giving it credit for. Take the weight for example. It isn't made of anything spectacular and foreign-sounding, derived from minerals found only on the moon. Yet it's weight to size and complexity are extremely good, not to mention it's weight distribution. It's not overly large externally either but is still roomy and comfortable, giving it competitive usability with reduced weight. It's safety is in no way compromised either being very good for a car of it's age and type despite not being as substantial as it's German rivals. Now consider the suspension system: Full coilover system with a very effective passive rear-steer ability made out of simple components for low cost and yet still among the higher-tech options available to those buying a saloon in the mid-nineties. The steering, though very Asian in terms of lightness, was still set up very well. Good caster, camber, toe-in and Ackerman angles create a car with balance and highly effective steering. The thing you can say about virtually everything on this car is that it is at worst merely adequate and at it's best, highly-competitive. Nothing may stand out and everything from the gearknob to the power steering may be as neutral as a magnolia bathroom but that is what makes the metaphor "wolf in sheep's clothing" so apposite.
I know what you're thinking. I've lost it finally. Well before you rush to judgement I would ask you just how many non-BTCC drivers you know who can tell you just just what thousands of hours driving one of those things at very great speed is actually like. And even those guys were allowed to install proper wheels and brakes, and didn't have to worry about oncoming traffic. Well I did. I have driven those things around corners where only one wheel was touching Tarmac at some points and the revs were pushing 8000. There are a few key moments you should watch out for in the Accord, never try Swedish-flicks on extremely smooth, sticky black-stuff as the balance is so central and the turning so tight and neutral that you will probably more likely flip it than break traction. Also, you cannot expect the back end to step out in a reliable way as per Ford or Frenchman as it would rather follow the front wheels round like ducklings behind their Mother. You can induce as much understeer as you want in the wet, and apply the appropriate throttle-lift to correct, if you really fancy you can prolong the lift-off and let the back step out then follow it with a quick armful of oppo' to rotate things back straight. Sometimes it is unerringly like a simulator. The controls are traditionally Japanese: "Sir may have feedback, but he must be discrete." But the response from the outside is reminiscent of something from the Lancia or at least Lancer farm. Over the course of a frankly astonishing 4 and a half months (my cars rarely lasting longer than 4 weeks, sometimes dramatically less) this car would endear itself to me in ways I would never fully be able to articulate to my friends or family, or even you, for the rest of my life. Though I could easily tell people of it's reliability (good) oil use (bad) style and grace (hilarious) or I could wax lyrical about the fuel economy and speed...Or the way the steering was so balanced that the tyre wear was perfectly spread across all four tyres and all 100% of the tread width...seriously I ran the first set down so quickly and evenly that I didn't notice I was running a set of perfect slicks for a few days. It was in most ways I could think of, perfect. Most ways. Despite all of this there was one thing I could not ever accurately describe.
The thing I found hard to tell people, for I believed they would disown me, was that this car had soul. Sure, it's pretty in an understated, muted 90's kind of way and it's well built to the point of OCD because it stems from a design which is similarly obsessive. Ok, this gives it functionality which means you don't find yourself swearing at it's failings all the time. But none of this speaks to the way the engine pulls at above 5000 when you let the revs ride or the fact that once you get used to the slightly snatchy brakes they NEVER fade and don't pull unevenly. The discs didn't warp no matter how hot I got them. Instead of being bored stiff as you might expect you find yourself marvelling at the way it propels itself around corners and how even though you feel a little remote you are ludicrously comfortable in the all-enveloping seats with their fantastic bolstering, while you glide by at over 100 with the excellent stereo playing and the excellent air-con blasting and the excellent.....Look, the point is that it may be a trifle plain and it may not look all that inviting to the uninitiated, but it's characterful to drive and everything does it's job as well as any German. All without that rhodium-heavy chassis and the poor round-town fuel economy. It's fun. It makes a great noise. You can outperform stuff a million times more desirable and it can sing and dance like a Pop-Star.
Of the hundreds of cars I have had the chance to drive over the years, and out of the tens of thousands of hours I have committed to doing so, only three other models have endeared themselves to me more. My Peugeots, my MGs and my Metros, the Honda even beats the Micras, just think of that for a second (and If you have no idea what I'm on about, read my article about just that 'Overdoing it, a love story'.) So it gives me no pleasure to have to tell you the reason that I finally got rid of it, was the same reason that I found myself desperately trying to control a (thankfully highly controllable) high-speed crash. I was so used to the speed of the thing and the way it willingly did whatever it was told that I was always relaxed in it. I should have let that be my warning but I suppose by then I was already too seduced. After a week or two or wrangling the thing into shape and getting it used to it's new and shorter life, I was so comfortable flinging it about like confetti that when on that fateful night, when I was particularly overworked and underpaid, as I traversed a corner with the slightest of right hard curves taken at 60mph, (really) the moment that all regular drivers fear, happened to me.
I fell asleep. I don't really know the duration in seconds but it can't have been long, and I was certainly awake for the rest of the journey home I can bloody well tell you. In those brief moments of stupor my entire life might have changed unrecognisably or indeed ended completely. We are not talking here of a long and hypnotic motorway cruise don't forget, but a sprightly gambol around the countryside. I am not Narcoleptic, or suffering from any major sleep complaint. I have driven further, when more tired, on more boring routes. I know when to stop if I'm tired and so on and so on...I am not completely without common sense...so there is no way this should have happened. I am lucky, and not for the first time in my life, to be alive after that little experience and sometime I still wake up remembering that blink of an eye where the world became whole again and I was in the middle of a whirlwind. There was an occasion when I was being driven by someone else (guess who) in the same sort of enthusiastic style as I am used to driving, and I was so dog-tired and comfortable that he was competent driving at such speed, that I nodded off with my head bouncing against my chest and the bumps waking me back up only infrequently. My driver friend found this amusing to say the least, aware of my apparent driving prowess but nonetheless impressed at my total lack of concern for great speeds in his car. Up until that point every passenger he had driven fast had either cut communications thereafter or at least been violently ill. Here was I however, asleep at 100mph doing a lovely little right-left hander with just a shade of negative camber heading over a crest. This incident remains stand-out and I think that as I wasn't driving it can easily be forgiven. At no other time could I be rocked gently to bye-bye land while simultaneously doing three-figure speeds and trying to keep the back-end in line.
It was very nearly the fastest car I have ever driven down my own private little stretch of high-speed highway. It could take machines which when new cost hundreds of times what I paid for mine and make then look like children running in the playground against an Olympic sprinter. It could take any surface, any condition, and master it like it didn't even need a driver. It did this without any driver aids outside the ABS and nothing more than basically just really good, simple design. Ultimately, and I can't believe it's cliché week again already, it was just TOO good. Yes I know, but it was. Way too good. For a 'seasoned' performance driver, a car which is so unflustered, so much of the time is, frankly, an absolute fucking menace. You think you've got it beat and then SNAP, you're waking up, upside down in a hedge.
I used the first-girlfriend metaphor to describe my love affair with the Humble Nissan Micra but if I were to do the same for this car I would have to describe it in slightly less civilised terms. She's pretty. Yep. Goes like a train too, oh yes. Got the style and all the toys, knows what she wants and how to get it......and she's a total Psycho. Just when you think you know her. Just when you think she's the one. When you're putting your head in her lap and letting her stroke your hair and whisper you gently to sleep, that's when she'll get you. One of these days you're going to wake up with a dead sheep's head plastered all over your windscreen.
Thankfully when it comes to cars you don't have to worry so much about repercussions, (unless you forget to inform the DVLA you scrapped it, in which case it's off with your head I'm afraid, those guys are bastards.) Once I had filled out and sent off the form and the local scrappy had taken the keys, I walked out of the yard confident that I wouldn't be receiving any hate-mail .with dead squirrels in it. The next car in the garage would be another Metro so it was something lively and fun which I knew well. I let the incident and the bad dreams pass into bitter memory and even contemplated buying another one a year or two later but in the end I shied away. Too much bitterness and disappointed remembrance told me that even though it was great to own, it didn't really matter what I wanted, the car would always win. Right now that's good enough, but I see those things coming up for the right money now and again and I wonder if the change in my work hours or lifestyle might mitigate the problem. I hope I'm just kidding myself. Despite the way I drive and the accusations of my friends and family and colleagues over the years, I am actually not particularly desperate to shuffle off this mortal coil. When I was young I knew even then It would be nice to die asleep surrounded by my family.
I had just hoped it would be in a proper bed, that's all...
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Comments (3)
this is a great post i have enjoyed reading this
Thanks so much Emma, we appreciate all the Feedback. We aim to please.
Our system can be a bit draconian at times but the one thing you can say is that the system is at least crystal clear. If you forget to do the right paperwork then you're in trouble but generally as long as you do what you're supposed to the DVLA will do their job too.