Faults:

I was quite excited to have purchased a Honda given its extremely good reputation for quality. However I have been very unimpressed so far with the build quality of the vehicle. Upon driving it off the showroom floor, it had a rattle in the rear window "shelf" that required 2 separate trips to the dealer to have fixed. The entire back seat and shelf ware taken apart and reassembled to fix this issue. All under warranty. So far, this has remained fixed.

At about 8000 miles, another rattle developed in what appears to be coming from passenger side rear seat side airbag unit. I have yet to find the time to take it to the dealer for inspection.

At about 11,000 miles I discovered yet another rattle coming from the rear window shelf again.

The fuel door release usually only works after pushing it at least 5 times, and sometimes requires more pushes than that. When I asked the dealer to inspect this during my first oil change, it opened the first time he tried it, so no work was able to be done on it.

General Comments:

I love to drive this car and it looks incredible. I love to walk up to it in the parking lot after work knowing it is my car, but it is frustrating to buy a US $30,000 plus car from a manufacturer with such a high reputation for quality and be so disappointed in the quality of the product. The car drives beautifully, but the build quality is so awful.

I know the dealer will fix this all under warranty, but due to Honda's program of no loaner cars, it is very inconvenient to find a day to sit at the dealer while they attempt to fix my car. I traded my old Pontiac with 98,000 miles before it started to require frequent trips to the dealer. Guess I should have held on to it since even at 98,000 miles there wasn't a rattle to be heard anywhere.

Faults:

Nothing.

General Comments:

Honda redesigned the Accord for 2008. The car is more aggressive looking than the previous model. It definitely stands out in a crowd.

The fit and finish of the vehicle are excellent. The doors close very quietly and smoothly.

The 2.4 liter engine is rated at 190 hp. It is very smooth and has the power to get up and go when it is needed. The 5 speed automatic shifts very smoothly.

The car also came with a ground effects package from the factory. Most people find it hard to believe that option came from the factory.

The car handles like a high performance sports car. It takes tight curves at higher speeds with ease.

Fuel economy is fairly good. I typically get 30-32 on the highway and 27-28 in town.

The only complaint so far are the front seats. They are designed for longevity, thus are as hard as a rock and not very comfortable. The lumbar support is not adjustable and the headrests are permanently affixed forward.

I will probably keep the car. I'll just have to be creative with seat cushions.

Faults:

The driver side door handle will become difficult to open. It doesn't happen all of the time, but it does happen far too often. I had the dealership look at it, and they said it seems like the mechanisms aren't lined up correctly. So they are in the process of ordering me another handle, and the mechanism that goes inside, to see if this will correct the problem.

My glove compartment was making this rattling noise so bad, whenever I would hit a slight bump in the road or anything. They put something in there to try and "cushion" the glove box so it wouldn't make that rattling noise. It seems to have worked so far.

My passenger seat also seems to make noise when someone is sitting in it, and I brake or anything like that.

I have also notice there is quite a bit of wind noise while on the highway.

The most annoying thing thus far would have to be my moon-roof rattling. I also had the dealership look at it, and it has something to do with the pan that catches the water. They said Honda said that there have been complaints about this, but there are no real fixes for it yet. So they tried a couple of different things, but still I get a rattle so obviously it didn't work.

I also had an issue with the paint on the back bumper peeling off right underneath the tail light. So the dealership took it and got the bumper repainted. Which the shop they took it to did a horrible job, so I made them take it back and redo... still doesn't look very good.

General Comments:

I really love the front end of the car, but not too fond of the back end... kind of just big and blah.

It seems as though I don't really have that much power when I try to accelerate to get on the highway or something...

The gas mileage is not really that great. I get about 19 mpg and that's for a combination of highway and city driving. That's not really good compared to the my Civic I had.