I graduated college in October 1985, and moved back to California for my first “real” job. As the Skylark I owned was sold on graduation day in Phoenix, I arrived at my mom and dad’s house without a car to get me back and forth to said job. What was a 21 year old to do? What would I get? What should I get?
As was the case with the Sunbird three years earlier, I enlisted my dad to help. My dad was not a car person – he owned the same ’70 Chevrolet pickup from new until he passed just a few years ago, and my mom got a series of used cars. I think she was driving a Toyota Celica at the time.
I did some looking on my own, first – I looked at both an ’84 Grand Am coupe and an ’85 Mustang, with the 4-cylinder. Both were in my price range, but I wasn’t terribly impressed with the build quality of either, and given my experience with the domestic cars I had owned previously, I wasn’t sure about the reliability.
However, Dad knew the general manager of the local Toyota dealer – the dealer name was Lunsford Toyota. Side note – the dealer put a sticker in the rear window with the dealer name on every new car they sold. Friends of my folks had bought a mid 70’s Corolla from them, and did a bit of creative surgery on the sticker so it read “FORD TOY”. Anyway, as we wandered the lot, Dad spotted a row of ’84 Corollas. I wasn’t sure if they were loaner vehicles or previous rental cars, but they were all pretty basic spec, and equipped with automatic transmissions. I was not inclined to just give in to him, this time.
Then, I spotted a burgundy hatchback – a 1985 Honda Accord LX. It had about 16,000 miles on it, and was equipped with a 5-speed stick shift. The interior was, to my eyes, quite luxurious (and also burgundy in color), and it had the quintessential accessory of the time – rear louvers. It made the car look racy, at the expense of rear visibility. I was smitten at first sight.
I remember my uncle telling my dad that getting a stick shift was a good thing – my uncle drove an early 80’s 200SX coupe with a stick, so he knew what he was talking about. A little back and forth, and the car was mine, with a selling price of $8650, plus tax and license.
The Accord was a revelation when it was first introduced in 1976, and I was fortunate to get the refresh of the 2nd generation, which had tighter styling all around, especially around the headlights and grille. GM, Ford and Chrysler had no answer to the build quality, and having a Honda dealer in the 80’s meant you had a license to print money. Many cars were sold above MSRP, and folks were on a waiting list for months, and when “their” car finally arrived, they were effective told to “take it or leave it”. As my car was a year old, I was able to avoid those purchase shenanigans.
The car itself was immaculate – not a mark on it, inside or out. The car had a number of luxury features that I had not had in the past; cruise control, A/C, the cool little felt-lined coin box to the left of the steering wheel. It was still carbureted, and made a whopping 86HP, but the slick-shifting transmission made the best use of each one of them.
About a year after I bought it, I took a 3 week vacation and drove the car from my home in California to visit my cousin (he of the sunroof install). He had joined the Air Force, and was stationed at Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan, on the eastern side of the state, hard by Lake Huron.
A friend of mine accompanied me on the trip, to help with the driving and to keep me company. I now suspect this was also done to placate my mom, who was worried about the whole endeavor. One week to get there, one week to visit, one week to drive home. This was the first time I’d taken a road trip of that length.
Other than the slushbox, this is a duplicate of the interior of my car.
Each day on the road was an adventure – most of the western part of the trip was on I-40, then we cut northeast on I-44 to I-70 in St. Louis. We detoured in Texas to visit my friend’s grandparents, who lived close to Amarillo, and again in Ohio, to stop in on a high school classmate of my sister’s who lived in Toledo.
The week in Michigan was great – a bit further north of my cousin’s place was a sign denoting the 45th parallel – the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. A little golf, some time exploring the area, and too soon it was time for the return trip.
We made one small change to the interior arrangements of the car for the drive home – on the way out, we had both rear seats folded for luggage, which restricted the ability of the passenger to recline their seat. We repacked the car so that the right rear seat was left upright, so better relaxation was possible.
We also took a different route for the first part of the drive home – went due west in Michigan and toured downtown Chicago before stopping for the night in Romeoville, not far from Joliet (get it?). I-57 south took us back to I-70, where we retraced our route, including another night at the grandparents’ place in Texas. The next day was the longest day of the trip, almost 900 miles to Phoenix. We also saw our best mileage of the trip, almost 55MPG, on the downhill side of the continental divide in New Mexico. A couple of days in Phoenix, seeing old friends, then the last trip home, where we got the car up to the highly illegal speed of 90MPH. Remember, this was in the days of the double nickel. The Accord ran flawlessly for the entire 5500+ miles. Cold A/C and cruise made the drive tolerable, and the seats were comfortable for long stretches.
Ah, the 80’s – when the shorts were short and the facial hair was contained to one’s upper lip.
During my ownership of the Accord, I met, courted and married my first wife, J. The Accord took us on our honeymoon trip to the Monterey Peninsula via California Highway 1, which is a most spectacular road. When I met her, J was driving a mid-80’s Buick Regal, but she – like most women – wanted a truck. She ended up buying an ’86 Isuzu P’up – standard bed with a stick, white with blue cloth interior, and maybe a cassette deck.
J’s truck, just after she bought it.
The Accord had no major mechanical issues in the 3+ years I owned it – just oil changes and a new set of tires were all it required – and it had under 60,000 miles on it when we reluctantly traded it in for something more, um, family friendly. The family was growing, and a 2-door hatch and a 2-seat pickup weren’t going to cut it with baby seats and baby paraphernalia.
Wow, you had perhaps the ultimate Honda buying experience of the 1980s. That price was very good, I recall that the 85 VW GTI I bought late in the model year (maybe early September of 1985) stickered at about $12k and I think I bought it for something in the 10s.
I remember standing around in a Honda showroom for maybe 20 minutes a little earlier in my purchase decision. Not one soul asked if I needed help, and they were not busy. I got stubborn and decided that if nobody came to me I was leaving. So I never even drove one of these. I probably should have, though.
I am a big fan of automobiles and business history. One of my favorite books is called Arrogance and Accords, and it is an insiders’ perspective of the fraud and graft of American Honda’s sales executives during that time. These guys were making hundreds of thousands of dollars from dealer principals when they wanted to open new dealers, and taking bribes to get the best inventory (remember the green Accord that was everybody’s darling in the early 90’s?).
It all came crashing down and many of those involved went to prison. The only dealer to do so was a guy some of you may have heard of … Rick Hendrick.
Interesting parallel…I had an ’86 GTi (which I kept till 2000 when I bought my current Golf), though I did look at the ’86 Accord Hatchback when I bought the GTi. One of the reasons I ended up with the GTi instead of the Accord was I didn’t like how the packages were bundled on the Accord (now the practice is common on all makes but back then it was pretty much on Japanese cars). I wanted fuel injection (my then-current car was a Scirocco which had fuel injection, and I didn’t want to get carburated engine). You could get fuel injection on the ’86 Accord but only if you went to the LXi model which had all the bells and whistles like power windows/locks which I didn’t want (as a VW owner I was suspicious of such things breaking, which of course they have on my 2000 Golf where by then you couldn’t choose manual locks or windows even on the base trim). The GTi had manual steering, and even a manual (crank) sunroof, which was more to my liking, plus big for the time 60 series wheels (without power steering even the 2400 lb GTi was a handful parking with the wide tires…should have gotten power steering but otherwise it came equipped with what I wanted at that time (plus rare for that time 4 wheel disk brakes, and alloy wheels).
At that time, my best friend had a 1982 Accord..his wife had a ’79 Toyota HiLux pickup, true stripper, manual everything, so kind of similar. I liked the Accord, and if the ’86 had fuel injection across the board, I might have bought one, but instead I stayed in the VW fold…if they hadn’t discontinued the hatchback Accord in 1989 I might have eventually bought one. I liked the midsized hatchback, which has become rare (the original Camry had hatchback, 626, and Malibu Maxx, but they are rare as mid-sized) versus the smaller sized GTi.
Guess I should have bought the really rare Quantum hatchback when they had it (but I wasn’t in the market then).
I like the period louvers on the back window…have never owned a car with them despite owning …but seem like they would be
Thanks for another superb installment and it looks like you very well pleased with the switch from domestic to foreign. I wonder if you ever went back, I suppose we will find out in the coming weeks…
That mid-cycle refresh really did visually “modernize” the car quite a bit, and I too find the front much more attractive on the newer ones although as of late I’m seeing a lot of charm in the ’82-’83 front end and clearly see the transition from the first generation Accord with the round headlights.
Great write-up… these were the most sought-after used cars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, at least among the folks I knew then.
Your description of 1980s-era Honda dealers is definitely true; they had by far the worst reputation of any dealers at the time. I remember shopping with my father at our local Honda dealers near Philadelphia, and the experience was just as you described. Not only were the cars sold at MSRP (understandable given the high demand), but the dealers all put on paint sealant, fabric protection, pinstriping, etc. on every car — for hundreds of dollars extra. Dad asked how he could get a car without that stuff, and the dealer refused to do it.
Finding a slightly used Honda at someplace other than a Honda dealer was like striking gold… being able to buy a Honda without hassling with their dealers. Not that any dealership had a great reputation back then, but Honda dealers were by far the worst.
And I also remember how luxurious these Accords’ interiors seemed at the time. Compared to other cars in its price class, the velvety interior was superior to anything.
Do any of you know of a good, comprehensive article/post on the final outcome of Voluntary Import Restrictions? (Or maybe someone here at CC could tackle it. 1…2..3.. not it!)
I was a little too young and broke to be considering new cars at the time, but it seems like the restrictions did little more than increase the cachet of Japanese cars.
A quick Google search turned this up….
https://www.perc.org/1999/09/01/voluntary-export-restraints-on-automobiles/
Interesting and eye-opening. Thanks!
My dad had an 87 Accord with a stick after a disastrous decade of Plymouths that rusted much better than they ran, and it was a revelation to him. I recall coming home to visit and asking him how he liked it; and his reply “90,000 miles and all I’ve done is change the oil!” While I suspect this was an exaggeration (brake pads and timing belts at a minimum would have been necessary at a minimum), In a time when you tried to sell cars before 50,000 miles because that’s when the problems started, 90,000 miles on routine maintenance really was astounding. I think he made it to somewhere around 120,000 miles before the tinworm got to the point where the our local safety inspection guy got too scared to approve it despite his admirably casual approach. Of course it had been throughly Ziebarted and like all Japanese cars of the era was more colander than car by the end. Still, it rusted less than the Volare, and it always started, something else the Volare had trouble with.
I’ll be the outlier here and say that I preferred the ‘82-83 styling. In fact I would have bought a new DX Accord hatch in late 1981 but the price markups and yes, arrogant salespeople at the local Honda-only store drove me off. They insisted they would add and charge for (or at least charge for) paint and interior protectants even if I took an untouched car straight from the port, and when I tried to negotiate they suggested I should just leave. I found a Honda/Olds dealer in another town who was happy to sell me a Civic for list price with no add-ons, after I decided that even at MSRP an Accord was a bit too dear. By the way I looked up MSRP on an ‘85 Accord LX hatch and it was just over $9K so yours held its value well.
Thanks for the research on the original MSRP. It had 16,xxx miles when I bought it. My dad really thought I should have gone with the Corolla sedans that were on the lot, but they were pretty chintzy looking, inside and out.
What I really wanted, and never had the money to do, was to get the gold lace wheels.
My friend bought an ’84 5 speed, two-door hatch new, put 275K miles on it, and the only repair was a distributor replacement. He junked it when one of the transmission shafts let go on the highway coming back from work, putting a hole in the case. He replaced it with a Civic for ten years and now a CR-V, neither of which were/are as trouble-free as the Accord.
Nice car. I am one of those who loves hatchbacks. If I had the chance it would be a 78 Celica Liftback, a 85 Accord hatchback, and a 88-92 Mazda 626 hatchback. Well at least I have the Mazda, can’t find a decent Accord and the Celica burned up.
I just saw your article. I also had a 1985 Honda Accord LX 5 speed hatchback with louvers too. Only difference was mine was blue and i bought it used in 1989 for $4000. I called her Yolanda Honda. I had that car probably until 1998. That car ran and ran and ran and was amazing. Thanks for the memories.