2006 Ford Fusion SEL vs. 2005 Honda Accord EX vs. 2006 Hyundai

One morning it happens. You glance in the mirror while stabbing at the wall outlet with the shaver plug to see a rumpled 47-year-old guy glancing back. A guy with a wife, a feisty five-year-old, a wailing newborn, Graco's finest booster and reverse-facing child seats, and strong opinions about the LATCH system. And then--blink--you're also a guy with a big, illuminated light bulb over his head.

Realization: All those automaton-driven Wonder Bread sedans, such as this comparison's Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, and newcomers Hyundai Sonata and Ford Fusion are your friends now--they can store a pallet of 40-count packages of diapers in a locking trunk so your single pals can't see them, ride comfortably in consideration of a newborn's fragile neck, don't tumble laterally off a corner if you suddenly swerve, and they aren't finicky--and they aren't minivans. Most important, they represent a value-for-the-money quotient that would be the envy of a Chinese Dixie Cup factory. Could there actually be more to this car thing than quarter-mile slips and slalom times after all? Your reflection is sadly nodding yes.

This edition of our popular family-sedan four-way represents an interesting encounter. Although they could pass for any quartet of cars in any Home Depot parking lot, there are seismic implications here: Two--Toyota's Camry and Honda's Accord--represent an almost untoppleable status quo. Another spearheads the furious advance of the Korean manufacturers trying to do to Japan Car Inc. what the Camry and Accord did to Detroit. Completing the circle is Dearborn's quixotic gambit to recapture its past sedan glories.

Speaking of bets, want to wager on these four sedans' origins? It's odd enough that all are North Americans, but what does one make of the lone "Detroit" car being built in Hermosillo, Mexico, while our Honda's birth certificate says Marysville, Ohio; our Toyota's, Georgetown, Kentucky; and our Hyundai's, Montgomery, Alabama. Tell us again which is the American car?

Our terms of battle were V-6 engines coupled to automatic transmissions in the most typical trim available. Following the tenet that race horses are compared around turf ovals and poodles at dog shows, we mapped a route that dropped our family fetchers directly into their natural habitat, a big fat node of Southern California mock Spanish suburbia.