Price:
£24 081 - about R350 000 (R312 900 in South Africa).
Top speed:
225km/h, 0-100km/h 9.5sec.
Fuel consumption:
8.56 litres/100km.
CO2 emissions:
141g/km.
Best for:
German style on a Japanese budget.
Also worth considering:
Audi A4, Saab 9-3, Toyota Avensis.
The word "premium" is a piece of jargon bandied about a lot in the motor industry. Every automaker wants its cars to be categorised as "premium", although that's less for reasons of vanity than because premium motors command premium prices.
In Europe, the premium bracket embraces Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz - and, at a pinch, Jaguar and Land Rover. In the US it extends to the up-market Japanese brands Lexus, Infiniti and Acura, owned by Toyota, Nissan and Honda respectively.
It takes a long time to win full membership of this club; Alfa Romeo, Saab and Volvo still haven't quite made it.
Anyway, Honda thinks this latest 2.4-litre version of its Accord is a premium product and, on merit, you'd have to say the company has a pretty good case. Great paintwork, close, evenly spaced shut lines, reassuring German-style door-closing thunk - this car has them all.
And, while Japanese automakers are Johnny-come-lateleys when it comes to diesel engines, Honda's second-generation i-DTEC unit, launched with this latest Accord, is probably smoother and sweeter than any comparable engine offered from Germany.
Our test car did without i-DTEC and came instead with the largest - at 2.4 litres - petrol engine available on the Accord, paired with an automatic gearbox. To most Europeans, a big auto sedan with a largish four-cylinder petrol engine looks like a recipe for roughness, limp performance and poor fuel economy.
It's to Honda's credit that our car was both smooth and swift, if not particularly frugal.
So what stands between Honda's Accord and membership of the premium club, if the car itself is up to scratch? I think maybe a certain quality of anonymity, a curious thing in a product from a company such as Honda that has often been a maverick or pioneer among Japanese car-makers.
CREDIT CRUNCH
If I ask you to imagine what the "face" of Mercedes or BMW looks like, you will probably know what I'm talking about; if I ask you to picture the face of Honda, chances are you'll draw a blank.
Then again, if the credit crunch is going to be as bad as the experts say it is, Honda's sort of understatement backed by substance could become very popular indeed. - The Independent, London