A couple weeks ago I picked up my new car (new to me anyway…got it coming off a lease), a 2004 Honda Accord EX-V6 with every option except for factory navigation. This is a heck of a vehicle. It’s solid, powerful, quiet, smooth…and I’m coming from a 1997 BMW 540i. This Honda is almost as powerful as my V8 BMW, but rides better and gets much better gas mileage. You get a lot for your money with these Accords, and it should last forever…I think it’s appropriate that my friend who took me to pick it up in Columbus, OH drove us in his 1991 Accord with 220,000 miles on the clock. They just keep on going.

I love the car. Like I said, every option but factory nav…which would have been a fun toy, but most of this car’s life is going to be just shuttling me back and forth to work, and my own brain works a lot better than any $2k navigation system. I was also unimpressed with the voice command on the nav-equipped Accords I test drove:

[ Me ] “Find Honda dealership.”
[ Car ] “Radio off.”
…
[ Me ] “Find nearest Honda service center.”
[ Car ] “Passenger temperature 85 degrees.”

…and so on. Sometimes it worked, but not enough. One of the cars I drove had a fixation with XM channel 39…every time it didn’t recognize my command, it changed the radio to that station.

So no nav, but the rest of the car is utterly fantastic. I may be integrating a touchscreen carputer in the future, with my own navigation, Internet, and music library capabilities…that will be a fun project. But for now, I’m enjoying a nice, smooth car with good gas mileage, and have quickly started applying my 30k+ miles per year to my new wheels.

Read on for pictures.