Honda shoehorns a fire-breathing but clever V6 into the Accord. How is it?
Driving along the straight stretches of the four-laned highway connecting Udaipur and Ahmedabad, the Accord V6 didn’t miss a beat. Cruising at 100 kph and with the eco light under the tachometer shining bright, we had four, probably even three, cylinders at work. No, there was nothing wrong with our car, except that a new technology called VCM was at work. VCM? Well, I’ll get back to that a little later, for I was more interested in knowing what would happen if all six cylinders fired away. With the road ahead opening up, I nailed the throttle. Teeth firmly clenched, the engine just cleared its throat and started to pull the car closer to the horizon. This was turning out to be a seriously fast car.
Honda have thrown not one, but two curve balls in your direction with the new V6. For starters, you pay nearly Rs 7 lakh over the regular 2.4 Accord (or even the last gen V6), and if that doesn’t shock you, Honda have upped the power stakes by another 52 bhp. I can think of a lot of places this engine can go in, including an Ariel Atom-like minimally built sportscar that blasts into the wind with creepy crawlies meeting their end either on the joke of a windscreen or your WWI-type goggles.
But that’s not all. At 271 bhp from the enlarged 3500cc V6, Honda have done what few other carmakers dare — produce a front wheel drive car with over 250 bhp. At nearly 1.7-tonnes and five metres of metal to haul, the Accord has perhaps pushed the boundaries of the front wheel drive, front-engined formula. For instance, when the traditionally front-wheel drive Audis get a serious engine, they opt for Quattro to split the power between the front and the rear. Honda however don’t think that’s necessary, but you don’t need to say your last prayers either.
The V6 has achieved a sort of cult status because it delivers the goods. With peak power coming in at 6200 rpm, the V6 also claims bragging rights as far as torque is concerned — 34.2 kgm at 5000 rpm. That’s almost identical to what the visceral Audi A4 3.2 Quattro produces! We don’t have test numbers to prove it for now, but we reckon on a cool morning with the stability programme switched off, the new V6 can hit the tonne in under 8 seconds. Yes, you read it right; there is a stability control button now on the new V6. There’s also cruise control which can come in handy if you are not sure you can control your urges with the accelerator pedal.
This, the new generation Accord, has something the Germans haven’t bothered to implement. It’s called VCM or Variable Cylinder Management. To find out what it does and not lose sleep over it, our test track was strewn with some hilly sections and nice straights for most of the route — the kind of playground one would refer to as ideal for a car like the Accord V6.
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Like Honda’s i-VTEC system that plays with valves, VCM does its bit with cylinders. Now in its second generation, VCM allows the engine to shut off two or three cylinders at a time, depending on engine loads, throttle position, engine speed and gear selection among others. When the engine runs on three cylinders, work in an entire bank of cylinders is suspended. A bit more throttle or higher engine speeds will cut the number of non-working cylinders to two. The only visual indicator is that eco light I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that brightens up on your tachometer. At no point in time are the non-working cylinders doing, er, nothing. The spark plugs continue to fire to keep the engine warm. Still not convinced with this tech, right?
Well, there is no ghost at work here. As Honda’s technical sheet explains, the i-VTEC system is deactivated in those non-functional cylinders to cut off fuel using spool valves on either side of the engine block to control the oil pressure in the rocker arms of the cylinders. Thus it connects and disconnects the rocker arms to control the cylinders that will work in the given driving cycle. And it does all that without causing an imbalance in the engine, and remarkably does it unnoticeably. That’s right. Despite all this trickery to shut off two or three cylinders, when all six cylinders start firing up, the response is instantaneous and there is zilch lag.
Even at engine speeds in the 2500-3000 rpm range, with the car doing in excess of 100 kays, the eco light does stay on with the right throttle input. And that’s the kind of speed one tends to cruise at on Indian highways — so the overall figure of 10 kpl quoted by Honda might just be possible. It’s like having a car with sport mode that alters engine mapping, without actually having to press a button. How cool is that!
But more than all that, it’s the way the car delivers the power. Unlike the standard Accord 2.4 auto that has some lag and feels a little low on the horsepower count, this one — rather obviously — just doesn’t feel so. There’s instant power available even as you get moving. And it just gets better as the VTEC valves come to play around 4000 rpm. There is a real surge from there onwards and the exhaust note starts to get more pleasing.
With an engine like this powering the car, you’d expect Honda to have given the Accord new coil-overs or really stiff dampers, to heighten the experience. However, in the quest for appeasing a slightly mature audience, Honda hasn’t done so. The spring rates are slightly different, but the running gear stays the same except for — and it’s the saving grace here — 17-inch lower profile tyres. It may be a little under-tyred, but it feels so only when you start to exploit the last 10 per cent of the car’s dynamic ability over a set of switchbacks. And that’s a moment one rarely gets to cherish — but if you still do, try your luck with a slightly wider set of boots.
The front-wheel drive together with the stability programme fights a bit to keep the car on track, but it never feels as if you are wrestling with Balrog, the demon from The Lord Of The Rings. So despite a front-based weight bias, the car doesn’t really do anything more than safely understeer into a corner if you surpass the grip threshold. Surprising, isn’t it? Yes, Honda have managed to pull it off.
But what they haven’t managed is to get the price of the V6 Accord to more reasonable levels. For the 25 lakh rupees it’s asking — nearly a third more than the last V6 or even the current 2.4 — you get V6 badging, a body kit with lip spoiler (on the Inspire), indicators on the rear view mirrors, a bit more wood and the electronic nanny controls we spoke about earlier, but still no sunroof. Of course, Honda will talk about the complexity of technology like VCM and that the yen-rupee conversion costs really hurt the possibility of a more honest price tag. It’s hard for potential customers to buy that argument, especially since the better loaded and nearly as potent new Skoda Superb V6 4x4 lines up for a quarter mile drag for your cheque book. Nevertheless, the Accord V6 is enthralling enough to scare you silly. Just make sure you’ve got a nice stretch of road at your disposal.