I’ve seen some crazy custom Hondas with sticky-out wheels and lots of negative camber, but this doesn’t seem to be that kind of scenario. How did this Accord come to have such a bad case of knock-knees? No sign of an accident; in fact this old Honda looks pretty pristine, although that’s not too unusual here. Lots of these around still. Let’s check it out from the front.
Do those tiny headlights actually work!?
The headlights are actually pop-up units. That is just plastic trim above the bumper.
Thanks. Hidden headlights on a Honda! A little broughamy (though in a good, aero way).
I believe the rest of the world got headlights where the trim is. I don’t think US law allowed them that thin back then.
Loved my 87 until a cop hit me head on.
Not that I’m aware of, I believe they all had pop-ups.
Even when I was a 100% import-hater I always thought these were nice looking cars.
I married one of these. Mrs. JPC had bought a new 88 Accord LX about a month or two before I met her. I was not all that impressed at first, but the car really grew on me. It was scary-good. I cannot recall a single repair that was required other than maintenance items. Judging from those plastic wheel covers, this one looks like an 88. The wheels were different in 86-87, and (I think) again in 89 (although I am less sure of this).
These were above-average rusters, so have largely disappeared from the midwest. I keep looking for one to do a CC on.
Mrs. JPC had bought a new 88 Accord LX about a month or two before I met her.
Can a man who loves American Iron and a woman with a Japanese sedan find true love… (Forgive the snarky-ness your post just gave me an idea for a CC Sitcom.)
We were certainly an odd couple – her with a new 88 Accord, me with a 66 Fury III. I learned to accept the Honda because it had air conditioning. 🙂
By the way, please ask me which one got dented and which one did not when they both sat out in the same hailstorm.
OK Ill bitye which one was unscathed Im betting the Honda due to high carbon content stressed panels
Wrong-O, Bryce. The sheetmetal on the Honda was quite a bit thinner and was dimpled all over like a golf ball. The Plymouth looked just like it did the day before (or in 1966). Not a dent anywhere. My sister was visiting, and quietly said “I guess they really don’t make them like they used to.”
Can a man who loves American Iron and a woman with a Japanese sedan find true love…
They usually wind up getting something German and splitting the difference. 😛
Jeez, I see cars with one or both rear wheels cocked like this regularly in Detroit. My guess is the bearings are about to go, which is an EXPENSIVE repair. To do both on the ’92 Tempo my mother had was over $800, and that was back in ’98. (Yep, rear wheel bearings were toast in 6 years. Nice cars, those Tempos.) To do the same repair 14 years later on a Honda? Might have to take out a mortgage…
This generation Accord was my Mom’s last car. She traded her 1970 Mercury Monterey Custom Coupe for it because she wanted a reliable road car for the 1000-mile roundtrips to visit the anticipated grandchildren. I was worried…she loved the Mercury, but she came to love the Accord, too…and drove it for 16 years, just two shy of the time she had the Monterey.
I see a LOT of this in my area.
If it’s a bearing assy it’s not too bad of a job. The problem is the “might as well” projects that come with it.
If you shop around you can snag a pair of hub assemblies for $100 or less, but then you might as well do the brakes while you’re at it, those shocks look a bit iffy too so might as well get that done, that tire took a beating too might as well replace the rears at least, and maybe an alignment while we’re at it… How much?? Ugh..
That happened to a co-workers 89 about 3-4 years ago. Luckily he was almost home when it crapped out like that. Drove it into his driveway, ordered the parts and had it back on the road in few days.
Maybe it’s a deliberate, in an homage to late-era Triumph Spitfires. The Mark IVs seemed to come from the factory looking like that.
A friend bought a very-much-used Accord of this generation and had a piece in the rear suspension break.
We had a 1987 that gave us the typical faultless Honda reliability, 100,000 miles with wear items only on top of the 40 or 50k it had when we bought it. I detested the job of changing the headlights on that car – the screws had a propensity for falling down into the area below the lights whence they could only be retrieved by a claw-type grabber or (at least once) a stick with a gob of wheel bearing grease on the end.
There are some really beat looking accords roaming this area but I havent seen one do this yet
Ah, the memories. I bought a new Accord LX in 1987. We kept it until 2007 and managed to put 345,000 miles on it. Finally our mechanic refused to patch it up because it needed two of everything and with Honda parts that gets spendy. It was the last of the carbureted ones and had a manual transmission. My youngest daughter drove it to the junk yard. These days we are leasing a 2011 Accord EX which is okay I suppose, but I often feel that Honda has lost their way.
How come everyone who ever bought a Honda got 100k trouble free out of it, except me. I guess if I hadn’t bought the lemon, one of you guys would have been stuck with it.
If you had the northern hemisphere’s lemon Accord, I had the southern hemisphere’s one. An ’86 JDM import ‘EXL-S’ sedan. B18B (1.8L) motor, with twin carbs and auto. Great looking car inside and out, which neatly masked the fact it was the worst car I have ever owned. The ride/handling was terrible (will it understeer on this corner or oversteer? Once the sideways bouncing stops I’ll try work it out…), and it was the second slowest car I’ve ever driven – the slowest is my best mate’s 93 Accord with single-carb B18B and auto.
But I hate it the most because one day the temperature gauge started wandering occasionally – but the coolant was full and the thermostat was fine. Turned out the oil pump had died. The oil pump was buried deep inside the engine, replacing it was dearer than a whole new engine from Honda!! Sadly I couldn’t afford either and my mechanic sourced and fitted a replacement engine from a wrecker’s yard. It had a warranty which was good as the replacement engine had a dud water pump… Once that was fixed, the car owed me twice what I’d paid for it, so I sold it for next-to-nothing to a friend – who was well aware of the trouble it had caused. He owned it for a week then drove through a give-way sign and got T-boned from both sides at one. The car ended up a foot or so narrower, with only one working door. And one side of the engine’s head sheared off… (yes my friend was uninjured).
So the Accord: one of those good-looking comfy cars that I accept was great for other folks (and my Dad was a Honda dealer mechanic), but which was unrelentingly awful for me…
OK, forgive my ignorance, but you couldn’t possibly actually drive it like this, could you?
The 1986-89 Accord is one of my all-time favorite cars. The styling is just perfect. I wish they had made them in more interesting color combos, though… they tended to be a little bland. But they were perfect bargain yuppie-mobiles. By the way, this is the bottom-line DX model. The LX and LX-i looked a lot better without the black bumpers and door handles.
Yep, this is the “poverty-grade” DX model. They didn’t even have rear speakers for the standard non-tape deck radio. I love my 89 LX-i to death, it’s a simply awesome car. If the A/C worked it would be perfect. Great mileage, and I personally think it’s one of the last Honda’s with that quirky japanese-ness within it. Strange button layout, and just weird/random features. And that panoramic glass area! Yeah Buddy! It’s like driving a greenhouse. Mine is Monterey Green, which is a bit unusual considering almost every one was this same gold color.
This was the last generation of Accord that still had a 3 door hatch no?, now thats something I have not seen in years.
Yes it was. I had an ’87 LXi hatch, and really should have fixed the front suspension rather than selling it to get a ’96 Jetta (junk!). Funny that you mention. I just saw an ’88 hatch this evening. It was showing its age, but it didn’t have the usual rust over the rear wheel.
Why have so many people here German Car Horror Stories? GCHS seems to be a common thread but I am comforted that most here admit to owning only one.
Not all horror stories. I replaced the Jetta with a BMW 330, which has been a far more reliable and enjoyable car. Better gas mileage too!
— still have the BMW
Yes, there was a hatchback in this generation, and in 1988 the coupe that led to the demise of the hatchback was introduced.
I’d love to see a 2 dr. hatch Accord make a return. 6 speed, natch.
We had that generation of Accord in my family; we owned a 1986 from new until 1999. Our car had the exact same problem as the car pictured. The upper control arm’s ball joint collapses, causing it to separate from the link which attaches it to the hub.
The carburetors on those cars are terrible when coupled to the automatic transmission. They never idle properly; usually spinning too fast. These cars generally don’t have much power; the fuel injected versions are at least quiet and refined, but the carbureted versions quake and strain against the brake when stopped in gear. This generation Accord was most often sold in LX trim with the automatic, which is a shame.
I’d love to own an ’88 or ’89 LXi sedan with a 5-speed; preferrably in dark blue with blue velour interior.
That’s the diagnosis I was looking for. Makes sense, given the rear suspension on these. Thanks.
Any Honda cries for a manual transmission but yes, they were almost all automatics and Honda automatic transmissions generally suck.
The best ones of these I have driven are the Canadian market DX. Most of them were manual with no power anything or a/c. Stripper Hondas sell well in many areas of Canuckisan (like Vancouver) because it rarely gets hot. You’d very rarely miss a/c. These cars were very light and tossible and were really fun to drive but even the bare bones DX was not cheap in Canuckistan, due to the import controls that had dealers marking up cars to ridiculous levels.
I test drove one in 1986, just before the horror that was a VW Jetta. It was a total plain Jane, not even a radio, but the car was a total blast to drive. The engine was so smooth and the clutch and shifter were brilliant. This one didn’t even have power steering. The reason I went with the Jetta was this was the era of import controls. All Honda cars had fat mark-ups on them. The Jetta was $10,400 and the Accord was $13,200. It was quite a premium for the Honda so I bought the Jetta. That car was a litany of nightmares so the car I bought after that was a Honda Accord.
Yes, rear control arm failure. The wishbone system on these was a great engineering feature but possibly not the best choice for potholed Saskatchewan roads. My dad bought an 88 EXi new, my brother is still driving it. It’s finally starting to rust, since years of heated indoor parking managed to stave off that inevitability.
While a great car, the one irritating maintenance issue has been a constant round robin process of replacing control arms and ball joints. Go around the car as they fail, then go around it again. Round and round.
I had an ’88 version of this car, but in the LX-I trim, with the manual.
It was a great car and zippy too. I was fortunate that I didn’t have suspension issues but did rack it up to about 181K or so miles when I sold it, a little worse (well, OK, a lot worse) for wear but still ran fine though it was most likely needing front brakes (at least), definitely new tires and likely the clutch was nearing its end.
Sold it, dents and all for $900 on Craig’s List to a guy who had the near idtentical car, same color too in less than 24 Hours and replaced it with the ’92 Ford Ranger I recently had to replace.
My mother had one of these cars, but I can’t remember what year. I want to say 1986, but hers had an automatic and fuel injection. It was the LX version, not the LXi, as my poor mother never learned to drive a stick properly.
It was a really nice car for her, as she was rather small (5’0″), with the low beltline she could see very well out of it. But the potholed roads in Northeast Ohio destroyed the struts, ball joints and drive axles, and eventually rust caught up with it. She ended up replacing it with a Honda Civic, which my one brother still drives.
I never felt comfortable in this era of Accord (or any Honda), I always felt like I was sitting on top of the car, not in it. Having grown up in big Fords and Mercurys, where you felt like you were driving a bathtub, I found the seating position in Hondas awkward.
The best seating position was in the original VW Golf (Rabbit) or Fiat 128’s. You sat upright but comfortable, and the car body wasn’t too high or low in comparison.
Nice to see one again. I just don’t want to sit in it.
Geo,
Are you sure?
Honda didn’t begin using fuel injection until 1985 when it was put in all of their SI, LX-I and SE-I models, all others remained carbureted.
I know as I had the LX-I, and that meant injection. The only difference between an LX and the LX-I was the addition of FI, alloys for the 4 door sedans and a moonroof, also for the sedans along with larger 6×9 rear speakers to replace the 6.50″ round jobs in the rear parcel shelf of sedan and I think the 2 door sedan (I doubt the hatchback got the larger ovals due to space constraints) – and a better head unit, I think.
Honda didn’t go full fuel injection until 1992 or so.
I had an ’85 Prelude. I loved the thing and it was super reliable. One weak spot was the AC compressor. They used to sieze at 70,000mi. I know because I drove the car 212,000mi and put in 3 compressors.
It really used to make me mad because the whole AC option cost $1,100 when the car was news (and it was dealer installed so they had to remove the bumper to install the condenser, include the compressor and the other bits, hook everything up and make it work). When I went to the dealer for just the compressor the charge was $900. That really made me mad.