The Smart Appliance

Why the pedestrian Honda Accord out-achieves the new Mercedes-Benz E-class.

- Eddie Alterman

The Honda Accord and the Mercedes-Benz E-class carry a lot of literal and figurative baggage, most of it good, some of it bad. Those allegorical Samsonites (or Tumis, in the Benz’s case) obscure that these cars are more similar than their differences in price, image, and execution would suggest. Yes, the Honda has long been the unassuming, unpretentious, and unquestioned definition of the modern family car, whereas the Benz mid-sizer has been filling country-club parking lots for more than half a century. But both are long running, highly evolved models of protean versatility. And their confrontation at this year’s 10Best illuminates that, though their paths have been different from the start, they have converged on the same fixation: total driver satisfaction.

The Accord is a kitchen appliance, engineered to offer an ambitiously broad set of buyers a car that makes them feel smart and secure. It is quiet and roomy, safe and efficient, inexpensive yet well equipped. It is a rational choice in a sea of rational choices. What sets it apart, as we’ve noted in 30 past 10Bests, is the way it drives. This is the front-wheel-drive sports sedan that nobody seems able to consistently recreate, a car that flows from corner to corner with predictability and gratification, its engine loaded for exit, its preferred manual transmission slid tightly into gear. There is a controllability and a precision to the Accord that unburden its driver from thinking too hard about going fast. Or from really worrying about much of anything.