are hondas really that bad?

[Nick Craft <ncc@scr.siemens.com>]

Hi folks,
Now we all love our audis and wouldn't swap them for anything, but sometimes
its good to pay attention to what the opposition is doing. In that spirit,
I though I would tell you about my experience recently renting a honda...

I went back to the old country last week (yes, I'm a Brit) and reserved my
usual cheesy subcompact car from Alamo at Heathrow. However somehow I got
bumped up to a brand new 2.0 liter Honda accord with a manual transmission.

Holy cow! this car goes like shit off a stick! The engine is simply amazing -
it pulls strongly and evenly from low revs all the way up to the red line, and
it accelarates as fast in 2nd gear as my 5KTQ does in 1st. You've got to hand
it to honda, they can really design engines. This is a 2 liter 4 cylinder
atmospheric unit that completely blows away audis 2.2 liter 5 cylinder turbo.
It was also smoother, but sounded at least as good as the audi engine.

I'd put the accelaration of the honda pretty much on a par with an IA modified
'85 TQC I test drove a couple of weeks ago. I suppose the TQC may be a heavier
car, also 10 years older, but still... I've not driven a VW VR6 or audi 6 cylinder
car yet, I'd be very interested to see how they compare to the honda.

On the other hand, the rest of the car wasn't so good, in fact the handling
was awful compared to my car, and the steering was dead.

Comments? flames etc.?

Nick.