Source: Honda News

With the discontinuation of the LX trim on the CR-V, Civic, Pilot, Odyssey and with the Passport & Ridgeline never having it, it was widely expected the redesigned 2023 Accord would follow suit, leaving just the entry HR-V SUV with an LX trim.  Such a strategy would make sense since with the lack of supply, it would make sense to offer only higher contented and higher priced variants.

But the Accord LX lives to fight another day.  It along with the EX are the sole surviving gasoline trim levels as Sport, EX-L, Touring and the newly introduced Sport-L (effectively a re-name of the Sport Special Edition) all go Hybrid-only. This is part of Honda’s effort to lift Hybrids to 50% of total Accord sales, much like they intent to do with the CR-V.  Notably, this also reduced total trims from 9 to 6, with Hybrid keeping 4 trims and the gas model dropping 3 of its 5 trims.

The trim walk is as follows, starting from low to high:

  1. Accord LX (gas)
  2. Accord EX (gas)
  3. Accord Sport (hybrid)
  4. Accord EX-L (hybrid)
  5. Accord Sport-L (hybrid)
  6. Accord Touring (hybrid)
The Accord keeps the same wheelbase but stretches another 2.8 inches, with full-size car interior volume as before

That’s not the only diet the Accord gas model undertakes as the outgoing 2.0T, optional on the Accord Sport and standard on the Accord Touring is dropped. Low take rate plus plans to drastically increase the mix of hybrid to 50% of all Accords is likely the rationale here. Which begs the question, why not go all hybrid? After all, it’s not without precedent, at least over at rival Toyota, not to mention for Honda & its competitors in many European markets. That may eventually happen, but for now given that the 1.5T gas engine continues to see use in the Civic, CR-V, Integra, it’s easy enough to justify the continued engineering on that motor, while the 2.0T was more of a specialized motor. In addition, the Hybrid has 15lb-ft additional torque, approaching the level of the outgoing 2.0T motor.

Accord is more classy as well as a bit evolutionary. Notably, plenty of Audi A7 design language.

As for content, the LX comes with a full suite of Honda Sensing capability such as Blind Spot Warning, but now also includes Traffic Jam Assist, a sort of quasi autonomous driving capability. LX and EX has cloth upholstery as well as a 7” touchscreen and 10.2” digital gauge cluster. EX (as has been the case since at least the 1990s) adds moonroof, as well as powered heated seats.  Sport, in addition to the hybrid, adds 19” wheels, leather wrapped steering wheel, and a 12.3” touchscreen. As you may have guessed from the addition of the ‘-L’ both EX-L and Sport-L add leather upholstery. Top Touring trim like the Sport trims also gets 19” wheels, as well as ventilated seats, heated rear seats, heads-up display, Bose audio and native Google infotainment integration.

Honda’s familial interior design as seen in Civic, Pilot and every other newly redesigned Honda is present

2023 is shaping up to be a big model year for Honda with the HR-V, CR-V & Pilot also all-new and the Civic having just been redesigned for 2022. Stay tuned for more detail and pricing information on the 2023 Accord.