Honda Accords Don't Belong in Museumsillustration by Julie Murphy / Photo by Getty"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.""All the good names like Cougar and Wildcat were taken," Toshio Sasaki, then Honda's foreign sales manager, told the New York Times in February 1977. "We had to settle for Civic and Accord." It has worked out okay.Honda's 1977 Accord hatchback photographed in its natural environment. A suburban street in Southern California on a trash pick-up day. At 50, this tiny car still makes intuitive sense.John Pearley HuffmanThe Civic had its 50th birthday back in 2023. In 2026, it's the Accord's turn. The trick here is figuring out how to celebrate a car that's hugely significant and utterly ordinary. Consider it as the small Japanese sedan that reset the entire market's expectations on what a great family car should be. And my family has had six of them. And two of those have been passed down through generations.AdvertisementAdvertisementWe're down one Accord now. My mom bought it new-ish, and now my daughter Nina is driving it. Surely there will be more in the future.American Honda keeps a stash of historic cars at its American Honda Collection Hall on the first floor of the company's headquarters in Torrance, California. Many are race cars— everything from SCCA Showroom Stock to IndyCars—and many more are production machines. So far, they haven't let me drive one of the IndyCars. But they do keep the production machines in pristine and drivable condition. And they do let us journalist-types out with those.I drove a bunch of these Accords, but something was missing. These were survivors; pristine examples of Accord generation. And the best thing about the Accord is that so few have survived. These were cars built to be used up and discarded. Not sit in museums or in someone's collection. They're supposed to survive in family memories, faded photos, and old Facebook posts. Not preserved in amber.Over 11 generations and a half-century, Honda has sold about 20 million Accords in America. It's the car that Honda has optimized for this market and still sells in solid numbers. As in 150,196 during 2025 into a United States market obsessed with SUVs. A silver Accord remains one of the safest and sanest purchases for the risk-averse, attention-avoiding buyer. And it's still excellent.MIROWhen the Accord went on sale in June 1976, it was an instant sales sensation. At that time, Honda had around 600 dealerships across the United States. Despite offering the Accord solely as a three-door hatchback, Honda quickly faced a backlog of orders lasting six months or more. And dealers were getting $800 or more above sticker for the car. That doesn't seem like a huge premium now, but in 1976 and 1977 the Accord was about a $4000 car—after adding in a radio and radial tires.AdvertisementAdvertisement"This new Honda may be the best automotive buy available in the U.S." wrote Road & Track in the August 1976 issue. It wasn't the sportiest front-driver around, only had 68 hp from its 1.6-liter, single-overhead-cam, single-carbureted four, and took an agonizing 15.4 seconds to stumble from 0 to 60 mph. Top speed was 90 mph. But it already had an unfathomably sweet five-speed manual transmission and was built with utter precision. What it was, more than anything else, was practical and refined.The first Accord was offered only as a three-door hatchback through the 1978 model year in the United States. While much of the world got a four-door sedan in 1978, the U.S. didn't get it until the 1979 model year. The first-generation Accord lasted through 1981.John Pearley HuffmanRemember, this was 1976 when garbage like the Ford Pinto, Chevrolet Vega, and AMC Gremlin were still in production, and the best-selling new car in America was the gargantuan "mid-size" Oldsmobile Cutlass. Toyota was years away from introducing its first front-drive car, the earliest VW Rabbit models were bedeviled by sloppy quality, and the pretty Datsun models of the late 1960s and early 1970s had been superseded by weird and awkward acid-trip designs.Approaching the 1977 Accord, its most striking feature is that it's tiny. At 162.8 inches long over a 93.7-inch wheelbase, it's 22 inches shorter than a 2026 Civic, and there's 14 inches less space between the front and rear axles. Then I got in it.State of the art automotive entertainment circa 1977. I'd still prefer those ventilation sliders over screen-based systems,John Pearley HuffmanThe original Accord is tight in the hips and shoulders, but the seats are comfortable, the shifter is right where a shifter should be, and the steering wheel is thin of rim and perfect in diameter. Everything about its layout is relentlessly logical, intuitive, and slick to operate. Driving through the mean streets of Torrance, there was an ingratiating throwback vibe. Somewhere between still-chic Adidas Sambas and now-dorky Members Only jackets.AdvertisementAdvertisementSkipping past the CB200T motorcycle my little brother Linus rode, the second-generation Accord is when my personal history with Honda cars begins. My cousin Guy Magrone, with whom I shared a bedroom for a while (separate beds), bought a new 1984 Accord sedan on my suggestion as he began his long career with Marriott. If I remember correctly, we once shoved nine of us into that thing. Maybe it was eight or ten.The first Accord built in America was a second generation sedan. That car still lives in its birthplace, Marysville, Ohio.John Pearley HuffmanHistorically, in the business sense, the second Accord is important in that it was the first assembled at Honda's first American plant in Marysville, Ohio. But for Guy, it was a companion as he established his career, moved around the country, and never failed. By the time he sold it, it was sagging and tired. But he's a meticulous person, so it was clean. "I drove it into the ground," he recalled recently. At my suggestion, he replaced it with a Mazda MX-6 in 1994.My nominee for the prettiest Accord is the third generation coupe. It was the first Honda car designed and built in the United States. This included right-hand-drive models sent to Japan, including the SiR coupe never sold in America. This LX-i coupe with a five-speed is still so tasty.John Pearley HuffmanI'm still a fan of the third-generation Accord, especially the two-door coupe. The hidden headlamps are slick, the styling is perfectly proportioned, and the interior is close-to-peak Honda. It still feels modern and so easygoing.John Pearley HuffmanBut I wish Honda had a few well-used Accords in its collection. My mother's first Accord, a '95 EX sedan with a five-speed, was totaled back in 1996 or 1997 when someone hit it broadside at an intersection. It was, alas, the last Accord we've owned with a manual transmission. But my mom wasn't hurt, and that's all that mattered.AdvertisementAdvertisementMy mother-in-law's 2001 LX Coupe came to Santa Barbara when she moved here from Memphis and became our nephew Brannan's when she passed. Then it was handed over to my daughter and eventually driven from California to Minnesota by my son Jack and his friend Nate Campbell two years ago. It was his college beater."We got stopped for speeding approaching Zion National Park in Utah," Jack recalls. "The trooper told us to slow down and then told us the best spots to visit at Zion." While at Carleton College, Jack loaned the car out to any of his fellow football team members who needed it. "They shoved like eight big guys into that thing to get to Minneapolis," he says. "I think at least one was in the trunk." When Jack graduated, he left the exhausted car there and we donated it to charity.The greatness of the Accord is that there are so few in museums. Honda didn't build them to be parked under trees at car shows with the proud owner sitting nearby in a lawn chair. As I write this, there's only one listed on Bring a Trailer. A sweet 1988 LXi coupe with only 27K on the odometer just sold over there for $8,000. I wouldn't mind owning it, but what to do with it? It's too nice to use as a daily. Plus, it's an automatic, and I'd want a five-speed.There have been 11 generations of Accord, and while they've grown ever bigger over time and evolved to meet the expectations of each era's buyers, they're still ordinary cars. Among the very best ordinary cars around. But this isn't Wikipedia. My favorites are the third-generation coupe, fourth-generation wagon, and the seventh-generation European Accord that was sold here as the Acura TSX.AdvertisementAdvertisementHonda has sold about 20 million Accords in the United States since 1976. Virtually every family has had one. Or two. Or more.Still practical and easygoing, and I got more than 40 mpg with this Hybrid model during my week with it. The 2026 Accord is still spectacularly unspectacular, agonizingly sensible and completely satisfying to drive.John Pearley HuffmanDriving a new 2026 Accord Hybrid, it's apparent that there's an astonishing consistency of character and general excellence to all the Accords. It's still subtle in operation, beautifully built and so useful. My week in one has me considering it as my next daily. It's still not museum material.Honda needs some well-used to the point of used-up Accords (and Civics, Elements, and Odysseys) in its collection to reflect the true soul of its brand. They can buy my daughter's 2016 Accord Sport after she's piled another couple hundred thousand miles onto it.The story answered the cover's question with a cautious "yes."Road & TrackYou Might Also LikeIf You Can Only Own One Car, Make It One of TheseThese Are the Most Popular Cars by State