Honda Accord

The Honda Accord (pronounced /əˈkɔrd/; Japanese: ホンダ・アコード) is a series of mid-size automobiles manufactured by Honda since 1976, and sold in a majority of automotive markets throughout the world.
In 1982, the Accord — which had always been manufactured^[1] in Sayama, Japan — became the first Japanese car to be produced in the United States when production commenced in Marysville, Ohio at Honda's Marysville Auto Plant. In addition, the Accord is, or has been, produced in Nelson, New Zealand, Swindon, England, Guangzhou, China and Ayutthaya, Thailand. The Accord has achieved considerable success, especially in the United States, where it was the best-selling Japanese car for fifteen years (1982–97), topping its class in sales in 1991 and 2001, with around ten million vehicles sold.^[2] Numerous road tests, past and present, rate the Accord as one of the world's most reliable vehicles.^[3]
Since initiation, Honda has offered several different car body styles and versions of the Accord, and often vehicles marketed under the Accord nameplate concurrently in different regions differ quite substantially. It debuted in 1976 as a compact hatchback, though this style only lasted through 1981, as the line-up was expanded to include a sedan, coupé, and wagon. By the Accord's sixth generation in the 1990s, it evolved into an intermediate vehicle, with one basic platform but with different bodies and proportions to increase its competitiveness against its rivals in different international markets. For the current generation of the Accord released for the North American market in 2008, Honda has again chosen to move the model further up-scale and increase its size.^[4] This pushed the Accord sedan from the upper limit of what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines as a mid-size car to just above the lower limit of a full-size car,^[5] with the coupe still rated as a mid-size car.