Junkyard Find: 1991 Honda Accord Wagon
Honda stood in a seemingly unassailable position in the American marketplace, with customers willing to pay whatever it took to get a Civic or Accord… until the 1990s dawned. The asset-price bubble burst in 1991, founder Soichiro Honda died the same year, the competition had caught up to the Civic and Accord, the Legend and Integra weren’t smash hits, nobody could figure out the point of the Vigor, and Honda USA was getting sweated over decades of kickbacks and general dealership hanky-panky. Oh, and American Peugeot dealers were having an easier time moving the 404 (even as Peugeot was packing up to leave the continent) than Honda was in selling the fourth-gen Accord wagon. You never saw many of them on the street and just about all of them are gone by now, but I’ve managed to find this 344,000-mile example in a Denver self-service yard.
Imagine, a station wagon with a manual transmission! By 1991, the minivan and SUV were really hammering wagon sales, and the Taurus wagon was grabbing much of the business that remained.
The Accord wagon was a good car, but it had swollen and softened into a more Camry-like machine by this time.
The Accord name still meant a lot in 1991, after nearly 15 years of the Accord having little substantial competition, but the specialness was about to be over.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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Where is the Accord Wagon pictured located? I could use some parts
Why is this not on the High Mile Cars List?