Would You Drive This? 1978 Honda Accord LX CVCC

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Finding the right historical perspective for the first-generation Accord is difficult, because it's not merely an old car; it's the old car that changed the entire American automotive industry. Seen through modern eyes, this '78—a denizen of Honda's unofficial Los Angeles museum and a stand-in for the first-year 1976 Accord—does indeed feel like ancient history, a distant ancestor of today's Accord whose only discernible relation is a few common nucleotides in its DNA. The first-gen Accord is even smaller than it looks in the photos; we're so used to 18-inch-and-larger wheels that the Accord's 13-inch steelies produce an optical illusion of greater size. In truth, the Accord is scarcely an inch longer—and three inches narrower—than a Honda Fit.

But there's another way to consider this car, and that requires casting your mind back to the darkest days of the malaise era, when the Big Four (AMC still existed!) were struggling to deal with new pollution standards and a new consumer demand for better fuel economy. Saddled with clumsy emissions equipment, American cars were hard to start and ran like crap, and their builders were falling all over themselves to slash horsepower and heft.

Honda, meanwhile, was trying to make its cars bigger and faster. It had already made its small-car beachhead in the U.S. with the Civic, and the Accord was Honda's first serious attempt at something more substantial. For all its thoughtful touches—more on which in a few—the very first thing I notice is how easy the Accord is to cold-start. One pump of the accelerator, one turn of the key, and the Accord's engine springs to life—typical today, but a minor miracle in 1978.

It's all the more miraculous when you consider that the Accord was saddled with its own complicated lean-burn fuel system, called CVCC. The Accord's 1.6-liter CVCC engine is a stroked version of the Civic's 1.5, with a 12-valve head, ignition prechamber (yes, just like an old diesel), and a three-barrel progressive carburetor. It was an embarrassment to the domestics who whined about the costs of adding a catalytic converter—CVCC didn't need one.

Not that CVCC was perfect. Look at the under-hood pics and you'll see two heat shields sandwiching the carburetor. Honda located the carb right above the exhaust manifold, and early CVCC engines had an unfortunate habit: When you shut them down, the gasoline would boil out of the fuel bowl and condense in the intake manifold. Restarting sucked that gasoline into the engine, prompting my past-era colleagues at MotorTrend to dub it "the self-flooding carburetor". (The heat shields seem to have mostly solved the problem. Still, while most carbureted cars recommend depressing the accelerator slightly when warm-starting, this Accord is the only car I've driven that actually means it.)

The warm-up is slow. The engine races for several minutes, scenting the air with the unique fragrance of catalyst-free exhaust. A light tap on the gas pedal drops the engine down to a slower idle, and the Honda and I are ready to go. I shift into first gear and the Honda takes off without stumbling, a feat few domestic cars of the era could manage without a lengthy warm-up drive (crossing a state or two was usually sufficient).

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