A downsized, turbocharged engine and a raft of safety and convenience features are the highlights of Honda’s new large family sedan 

UPDATE: We’ve driven the new Accord! Click here to read our review 

SINGAPORE — After a hiatus of two years, the Honda Accord has returned to Singapore. For now, only one variant is available, priced at S$154,999 with COE. The price is valid until July 17, 2019, and the car is available for viewing only at Kah Motor’s Ubi showroom. 

This 10th generation Accord is the first of the mainstay Asian large sedans to go turbocharged, sharing its 1.5-litre engine with the Honda Civic Turbo, albeit in a higher state of tune. Its perennial close competitors, the Toyota Camry and Mazda 6, stick with normally-aspirated engines, while Euro rivals like the Volkswagen Passat and Skoda Superb have long since adopted forced induction. 

Packing 201hp and 260Nm of torque, the new Accord is more powerful than even the previous 2.4-litre flagship. Kah Motor says the fuel consumption is 6.4L/100km as per LTA testing, which is slightly more economical than all the above competitors except for the 1.8-litre Passat. According to the windscreen label on the showroom unit we saw, the Accord falls into VES band B (neutral). 

No performance figures have been confirmed locally, but in North American tests, where the Accord has been available since late-2017, the car achieved a 0-60mph (0-96km/h) time of 7.3 seconds, a significant improvement over the old 2.4 Accord’s 10+ second century sprint effort. 

With the Civic growing in size – and in the 1.5 Turbo’s case, performance – the Accord is now positioned more upmarket than before (this is the least powerful engine now available for it). 

As such, it gets plenty in terms of equipment and features. On the luxury/tech front there’s a new 7.0-inch digital instrument cluster, 8.0-inch infotainment screen with integrated navigation, Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, wireless phone charging, and eight-way adjustable electric driver’s seat.

In terms of safety, the Accord gets a full suite of active safety and assist technology, rolled under the Honda Sensing banner. This includes autonomous emergency braking, lane departure warning and road departure mitigation, adaptive cruise control, 360-degree parking camera, and the rather excellent blind spot-eliminating Lanewatch system. 

But perhaps the most important aspect of the Accord, at least to value-stretching Singaporeans, is that it’s larger and more spacious than ever before. Overall length and width have grown 11mm and 12mm respectively, while the wheelbase has had a very useful 55mm stretch. That, combined with repositioning the rear seats, has unlocked an extra two inches of rear legroom, while hip, shoulder and room have also been increased in spite of the car’s more coupe-like roofline. The boot capacity is also larger than before, at 570-litres. 

Kah Motor is offering discounts for early-bird buyers (from now till July 17), which brings the Accord’s pricing down to $154,999 with COE. 

The Accord’s price may be uncomfortably high, but it may well end up being a price worth paying – the car has performed extremely well in US reviews, with the overall consensus that it’s one of the best in class for driving dynamics. It’s something we’re eager to find out for ourselves, so watch this space in the coming weeks for CarBuyer’s in-depth review.