2003 Honda Accord

Leno or Letterman. Republican or Democrat. Gryffindor or Slytherin. With onions or without.

Many of life's choices come down to picking between two camps-sorting ourselves, if you will. In the vast heart of the midsize sedan market, huge numbers of consumers looking for decent transportation have sorted themselves according to their vote in the long-running rivalry between Honda's Accord and Toyota's Camry.

In recent tradition, the Camry's strength has been the relentlessly high standards of Toyota's development and manufacturing practices. It's a supremely competent and well-made automobile. The Accord, though also well put together, shows something else: a subtle creativity in its hardware. A Honda represents clever solutions to technical challenges. The compromises involving performance, comfort, efficiency, and safety always seem especially well handled in an Accord. Maybe it's because company founder Soichiro Honda was an engineer and a racer. Get a Camry, and you're a smart consumer who picked a really good car. Choosing an Accord says you prefer a car to be lighter on its feet, crisper in its responses, and more efficient in its use of space and natural resources.

In their latest forms, the redone-for-'02 Toyota Camry and the all-new '03 Honda Accord continue the traditions of their rivalry. Some intense, back-to-back-to-back flogging over twisty roads in our nearby Santa Monica mountains, and preliminary testing of a preproduction example at the track, showed how the new Accord stacks up against the Camry, as well as how it compares with its predecessor. Relative to the previous-generation Accord, the new car feels larger inside without having grown significantly on the outside, it seems stiffer and more substantial, it makes notably more power yet delivers even better fuel economy (both the four- and six-cylinder engines), and it feels more planted on the road. Alongside an '02 Camry, the new Accord is clearly more compact, steers more crisply, and handles with more neutral balance. It also accelerates faster and is a little more fuel-efficient. So all the players remain in character.

Honda started from scratch with a new body structure that has greater rigidity, encloses more interior volume, and is friendlier to the passing airflow. Exterior dimensions of the Accord Sedan (see sidebar for details on the new Coupe) are little changed, though the wheelbase has been stretched a full inch, to 107.9 in., and head- and kneeroom, especially in the back seat, are increased enough to make a difference. Clever nipping and tucking of the body's outer skin has trimmed the coefficient of drag from 0.33 to 0.30 and cut wind noise as well.

Honda decided early on that the Accord's new body structure had to rank it at the top of the midsize class in safety crash tests conducted by the government and the insurance industry. Assuming those tests, when they happen, agree with what Honda's own research has shown, the Accord will receive the highest available rating in all the standard impact tests-a distinction it will share only with the Volvo S60 and Lexus IS 300.

In drawing the contours of the new Accord, Honda says it wanted to capture a sense of emotional energy and went for an organic, muscular theme as distinct from the mechanical, sculpted look Audi and VW favor. Do you see a cheetah ("aggressive face, sleek body, muscular legs," says the press kit) in the new Accord? Well, no, we don't either. But it's not a bad-looking car. Some surface details are quite interesting, such as the front fender top that comes off the headlight in a convex curve, morphs to concave over the wheel flare, and bends back to convex to blend into the A-pillar. The sharply triangular headlamp units suggest Honda's trick S2000 roadster.