Designing the new Honda Accord: style, sportiness and a premium feel

Designing the new Honda Accord: style, sportiness and a premium feel. The style of the car really appeals to me. It is more distinctive, new and premium. The biggest positive change of the new car vs. the current car is the sportiness and the style of the vehicle. The lines are fantastic. Read Honda Accord 2011-2012

The new car is an evolution of the current car until you see them side-by-side and you actually see that the new one is far more muscular. It's more distinctive. It's got a greater presence than the outgoing car.

The extra width of the car has really worked very well. I just love the wheel arches - the bit that actually creases over the metal. That looks really nice to me. It feels really premium.

17 inch alloy wheels - for the first time, it's got more of a cockpit feel to it. Half-leather seats.

The fascia, dashboard, I think is genuinely premium. It appeals to me personally.

The instrumentation feels good.

One of the objectives of designing the new car was to bring those levels of refinement and quality that you would normally expect to see in the class above, rather than in the D segment. And I think we've absolutely achieved that within the Accord.

And I think that's particularly seen within the Tourer. It's such a close match to the Tourer concept that we showed last year in Frankfurt, and I guess people didn't expect that we would do that. Bright red with the privacy glass - it just looked outstanding.

Katsumi Horikawa - Large Project Leader, Accord Tourer: "The thing that gives me most satisfaction after developing the model is seeing real customers using the product. If they have a car that is worth more than the money that they paid for it, it gives me great satisfaction. "

Design gives us a huge opportunity to appeal to image-conscious user-choosers who are perhaps a little more status-conscious.

When I talk about sporty styling, I'm not saying that we're actually creating an out-and-out performance car. We're not looking to compete with the BMW M3 or the Audi RS4. What we're looking to do is we're looking to provide what the consumer is demanding which is a car that has an involving drive certainly, but looks sporty and fantastic as well. And that's where we've seen the market moving, and we think with Accord we've absolutely achieved that.

Tag : Honda, Honda cars, style, premium, designing, changes, new Accord, new Honda Accord

Honda - The Power of Dreams.