Short Test Drive, 1996 Honda Accord

I was in Florida over the weekend, was down for memorial service for my grandmother and spreading her and my grandfather's (previously deceased) ashes in the Everglades. My cousin was down from Maine and borrowed this car from my uncle (his dad). So, I figured I would take it for a drive and write out my thoughts.

This is a 1996 Honda Accord DX. It is the fifth generation of the Accord.

It is old. How well it has been cared for varies. It is dirty and the windows and body could use a good washing and the headlights could use some restorative polishing. But, it's a 1996.

Modern Honda Civics are probably about the same size as this.

Being a manual from 1996 this has that harder to depress clutch feel, probably a bit tougher to depress than my wife's 1994 Honda Prelude. Certainly harder than my BRZ. I think these tougher pedals are probably easier to teach people to drive a manual on.

During my steering rack test I test the steering by starting from a stop and doing a left or right turn to see how many turns of the steering wheel are required, and another test at low speed, not from a stop.

From a dead stop I had to turn the steering wheel  about 720 degrees, 2 full turns of the steering wheel. While moving at low speeds, 5-20 MPH, it took about 180 degrees. This is a lot of steering wheel cranking compared to what I am used to.
The handling and suspension were not terrible though for what this car is, nor were the brakes. It was not overly wallowy or like driving a boat, but it also was not sharp.

The interior has held up pretty well.
While I don't find these seats as comfortable as the cloth ones from my now deceased 1994 Honda Prelude I was okay with them. Maybe I have a thing for mid 90s cloth seats, but I tend to find them more comfortable than their bulkier and attempting to be more cushioned modern counterparts. Unfortunately the driver seat did not hug like the Prelude.

That 1990s front visibility. The dash is low, relatively flat, and unobtrusive. The controls are simple in both layout and operation. Also no buttons except horns on the steering wheel.

The speedometer says a top speed of 140 MPH. This might be ambitious.
This was powered by the F22B, likely the F22B2.
The F22B is a 16 valve single overhead cam (SOHC) engine.
When new it produced 130 HP @ 5300 RPM and 139 lb-ft @ 4200 RPM.
The gearing on the five speed manual is tall. The engine does not feel like it has a lot of torque or power. Unlike the DOHC Honda engines, especially those with VTEC, this engine does not come onto cam like the Preludes do. There is just not much power to be found.
And I mean that gearbox is tall. Generally speaking at speeds of up to 50-55 MPH I found it better to stay in 4th gear rather than shifting to 5th. Even at those speeds shifting to 5th was close to lugging the engine. This is very different from my experiences in the fourth generation Prelude Si and Prelude VTEC where the car will happily be in 5th gear at 30-35 MPH.
There is just much to be found for acceleration in this ~214,000 mile car.

But then, this was never a performance vehicle.
The 1996 Honda Accord is good for a self reported average of 26.4 MPG.
This was not a performance model. It should be noted that the Accord, especially the Accord Coupe and Prelude of this era had a lot of parts in common. For example this engine bay looks a lot like the 1994 Honda Prelude I had, though with a smaller engine (likely due to being SOHC vs. DOHC).
The fifth generation accord weighed in at ~2855 lbs. while a modern ninth generation weighs in at ~3193 lbs.

Either way it was kind of fun to drive this old F22B powered Honda, even for a short bit, just for the experience.
It is amazing how much less hurried this car is in terms of throttle response compared to modern efforts that have similar (new) power figures (granted this car probably would not dyno like it used to). Granted a lot of that is probably down to the tall gearing on the transmission.