Samson

call it what you like.

Ill restate it. Why did honda bother changing the 05 accord at all... if more was to come for 06. It seems a waste either way.

And also. What honda changed for 05.. is plenty when u look back at past refreshes... The 97-01 preludes got a new grill.

My point is... if the accords sales have been falling.. they should have done this for 05, not 06.

______

Oh.. and if they 06 accord looks like that one posted.. thats gotta be the most drastic change ive seen for a mid cycle refresh for honda.

kazi

Honda has always made small, mostly subtle changes before refresh and model change over. Honda has stated a while ago, they're going to make side airbags standard in nearly all their products in the very near future. The only change for 05 really was the taillights on the sedans and that was because the introduced the hybrid and just used the same taillamp on the hybrids. This was exactly what they did on the Civics for 03 with the jewel taillamp on the sedans and the new instrument panel lit blue for sedan and red for coupe just before the real 04 refresh for the Civics.

Accord sales are falling in relative to last year's number, but this isn't disastrous. Honda hasn't played with the high incentives game that Toyota and many of the other manufacturers has utilize to move cars off their lots, so Honda doesn't turn over its stock as fast as Toyota, but on the other hand, it helps keep profit margin higher and keeps resale value up for customers.

MrFatbooty

Honda Motor Co. will try to reduce sales incentives in the United States by freshening the Accord and remodeling the Civic this fall.

In the current year, which started April 1, Honda expects to spend an average of $480 per vehicle, down from $610 in the previous fiscal year ended March 31. Honda wants to reduce Accord incentives to $880, from $1,050 last year, and to cut Civic incentives to $480, from $690.

At a press conference last week, Koichi Amemiya, Honda Motor executive vice president, declined to be specific about plans to refresh the Accord. In the first three months of this year, U.S. sales of the key nameplate fell 7.0 percent from a year earlier, to 77,371.

Overall, Honda expects to sell 1.675 million vehicles in North America in the current fiscal year, up 6.3 percent from the last fiscal year. Sales projections count on the Ridgeline pickup, which went on sale in February, to get off to a good start.

In the fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31, Honda fared better in North America. Its operating profit in that region shot up by nearly sevenfold to $685.6 million, driven by sales of the Acura RL and TL sedans and the Honda Odyssey minivan and Pilot SUV.

Honda's consolidated, or group, net income for the three months surged 26.9 percent to $875.8 million. Operating profit soared 24.3 percent to $1.31 billion. Revenues rose 9.5 percent to $21.88 billion.

http://www.autoweek.com/news.cms?newsId=102306

I guess the switch for '05 to red rear turn signals on the sedan to coincide with the launch of the hybrid model didn't actually constitute a refresh, so here it is for '06.

98CoupeV6

Yeah incentives are something Honda religiously avoids, and for good reason, but now they're being forced into them due to slackening demand. Hopefully this will do wonders for sales, as most people's biggest problem with the Accord is its styling.

kazi

Wow, who would've predicted that? :reechy:

MtViewGuy88

Actually, I've heard that sales of the K24-powered Accords are picking up again, thanks to the high price of gasoline. Having actually test-driven a K24-powered Accord LX about a year ago I can say the vehicle has surprisingly good performance given you're only using a four-cylinder engine. 24 mpg city, 34 mpg highway EPA rating is very desirable nowadays, especially for a vehicle the Accord's size.

MrFatbooty

New, more detailed spy pics: http://www.vtec.net/news/news-item?news_item_id=362191

Samson

i think if anything.. the rear more closely identifies with the coupe.

sherwood

i actually like the current one more.

Troopa-R

Much improved rear end, except for the lip. It sucks that nothing else was changed - especially the hideous front end.