2009 Honda Accord Lx 2.4l Sedan One Owner With Clean Car Fax!!! on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: 2000 Honda Passport 4WD

The suits at American Honda Motor Company must have spent the bulk of the 1990s tearing out their hair in frustration as their rivals raked in big money from the sales of ever-more-profitable SUVs, even as American car shoppers lost interest in sedans and hatchbacks. Oh, sure, the Civic-based CR-V appeared here for the 1997 model year and sold well enough, but the lack of a larger SUV pained Honda more with each passing year. With the Acura MDX and Honda Pilot not ready for showrooms until the 2001 and 2002 model years, respectively, some stopgap had to be found. Isuzu stepped up and made a deal with Honda: the Rodeo would get Honda badges and become the Passport, while the Trooper would show up in Acura showrooms with SLX badges (for the 1994 and 1995 model years, respectively). Here's one of those Passports, found in a Denver-area self-service yard. Things got even weirder in the Isuzu/Honda world around the turn of the century, with the Honda Odyssey getting Isuzu badges and being sold as the Oasis. Fast-forward to 2009, and the only Isuzu-badged vehicles available new here were rebadged Chevrolets: the I-Series pickup (Chevy Colorado) and the Ascender (Chevy Trailblazer). The Passport name has some interesting American Honda history, stretching back to the first Honda vehicle sold here (and the biggest-selling motor vehicle in human history): the Super Cub. American Honda Motor Company couldn't use the Super Cub name on our shores, because Piper Aircraft had been selling a small plane called the Super Cub since 1949, so the motorcycle was called the Honda 50 over here. Eventually, this bike got a 70cc engine and became the Honda C70 Passport, sales of which continued through the middle 1980s. That means the Passports sitting in your local Honda dealership right now got their name from a one-cylinder motorcycle. General Motors has a Passport connection as well; when GM created the Geo brand to sell rebadged Isuzus, Suzukis, and Toyotas in the United States, it created a marque called Passport to sell the Daewoo LeMans as the Optima in Canada (all the other vehicles sold by Passport dealers were Isuzus). So, Honda's need to offer SUVs in its American dealerships led to an arrangement with GM-connected Isuzu to sell these trucks with a model name bearing links to both companies. So much history in the junkyard! Just as Geo-badged Toyota Corollas (mostly) got Delco radios, so did the Passport get Honda radios.

Question of the Day: Ever consider driving a minivan?

Since I'm supposed to know something about cars, it happens all the time: friends and relatives ask me advice about what kind of vehicle they should get. Very often, the only type of vehicle that can check every item on their wish list (e.g., hauls lots of people and stuff, gets good fuel economy, has great crash-test ratings, can take four Great Danes camping, and so on) is a modern minivan... and, of course, nobody wants to hear this. I'm not a minivan person, they will wail, and so they end up with a cramped, fuel-swilling SUV or a not-so-space-efficient minivan-in-disguise CUV. So, is it worth becoming one of those minivan people in order to get the incredible usefulness of these masterpieces of vehicle engineering, or do you hold your head high and drive something that doesn't quite meet your needs? Related Video: Auto News Design/Style Chrysler Honda Toyota Minivan/Van question of the day questions

Consumer Reports no longer recommends Honda Civic

Consumer Reports annual Car Reliability Survey is out, and yes, there are some big surprises. First and foremost? The venerable publication no longer recommends the Honda Civic. In fact, aside from the walking-dead CR-Z and limited-release Clarity fuel-cell car, the Civic is the only Honda to miss out on CR's prestigious nod. At the opposite end there's a surprise as well – Toyota and Lexus remain the most reliable brands on the market, but Buick cracked the top three. That's up from seventh last year, and the first time for an American brand to stand on the Consumer Reports podium. Mazda's entire lineup earned Recommended checks as well. Consumer Reports dinged the Civic for its "infuriating" touch-screen radio, lack of driver lumbar adjustability, the limited selection of cars on dealer lots fitted with Honda's popular Sensing system, and the company's decision to offer LaneWatch instead of a full-tilt blind-spot monitoring system. Its score? A lowly 58. The Civic isn't the only surprise drop from CR's Recommended ranks. The Audi A3, Ford F-150, Subaru WRX/STI, and Volkswagen Jetta, GTI, and Passat all lost the Consumer Reports' checkmark. On the flipside, a number of popular vehicles graduated to the Recommended ranks, including the BMW X5, Chevrolet Camaro, Corvette, and Cruze, Hyundai Santa Fe, Porsche Macan, and Tesla Model S. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the hilariously recall-prone Ford Escape getting a Recommended check – considering the popularity of Ford's small crossover, this is likely a coup for the brand, as it puts the Escape on a level playing field with the Recommended Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Nissan Rogue. While Ford is probably happy to see CR promote the Escape, the list wasn't as kind for every brand. For example, of the entire Fiat Chrysler Automobiles catalog, the ancient Chrysler 300 was the only car to score a check – there wasn't a single Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, or Ram on the list. That hurts. FCA isn't alone at the low end, either. GMC, Jaguar Land Rover, Mini, and Mitsubishi don't have a vehicle on CR's list between them, while brands like Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Nissan, Lincoln, Infiniti, and Cadillac only have a few models each. You can check out Consumer Reports entire reliability roundup, even without a subscription, here.