A couple of months ago my wife and I decided it was time to sell our old 2015 Mazda3.
I say our, but it was really mine, given how my wife never drove it, and the decision to buy it was basically mine – I was remarkably oblivious to her hints at the time that she would much rather buy a Honda Civic or Accord, and rather than argue with me she decided to just let it go. Of course, she was proven right several years later when we were shopping for child car seats, and I realized that basically nothing would fit in the rear seat of the Mazda without rendering the front passenger seat unusable.
Anyway, it is nine years later, and I now own a Honda Accord.
Based on this new information some of you might ask ‘What?! You replaced a zippy hatchback with this thing? Could you be any more boring?’
Well, yes. I’m always happy to plumb new depths of being boring. Hopefully that’s not news to anyone. But there is one thing that I’m quite excited about with this new car, and that’s the little logo on the back.
It’s not my first time driving one of these – I had a Prius rental many years ago and was thoroughly unimpressed with how it felt to drive. That said, a few years ago we replaced my wife’s car with a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid and it felt…noticeably better, shall we say. For all the hullabaloo about battery electric vehicles in the last few years, hybrids appear to be where the real action is, at least in my price range.
When it came time to replace the Mazda, I knew I definitely wanted something bigger, but I didn’t want a crossover or SUV, which basically limited my options to two vehicles – the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. I test drove the second one, and that immediately banished any thoughts of Toyota from my mind. This car is smooth, quiet and incredibly responsive which is amazing given its size and deceptively small 2.0L engine. I say deceptively small because most of the power you’ll get at lower speeds comes from the electric motor, making this feel more like a BEV than a typical hybrid.
To be clear, it’s not a BEV by any means. But the real-world fuel efficiency holds up to the EPA estimates so far (the readout on my dash says I’ve averaged just under 46mpg since I bought it) and it’s a joy to drive. And it really does feel like a car from the future – a giant (by my standards, anyway) 12″ touchscreen for Android Auto and honest-to-God USB-C ports instead of the cigarette lighter port of yore. Truly, the future has arrived.
And yes, I know a lot of these features aren’t really futuristic in any sense of the word. But given what seems to pass for futuristic in the auto industry these days I think I’m happy to pretend otherwise.