de autos cars

Companies don't have ideas. The people that work for them do.

People retire, die and are replaced by other people with other ideas.

Nothing lasts forever.

Nobody's perfect.

No, TireKicker has not become the official journal of the obvious. I'm reminding myself how we can go from a 25-year string of absolutely brilliant products (virutally everything Honda built from the 1976 Accord onward) to the Honda Crosstour.

I'll usually recall my dad's car dealer friend Jim Ellis' words ("there's an ass for every seat") when considering styling and then default to a phrase like "a matter of taste".

But....no. The Crosstour is ugly. Not quite Pontiac Aztek ugly...but ugly. And with a blind spot the size of....well, a 1976 Accord.

I know BMW started the big four-door hatchback thing with the X6, but if BMW jumped off a building......

What's wrong with it? Well...let's put it this way...it's an Accord...with four-wheel drive, an open hatch instead of a trunk, the aforementioned blind spot, the aforementioned ugliness, and in the case of our tester a price sticker of $36,930....or more than 5 grand more than the bottom line for a loaded Accord EX-L V6 with navigation.

Would you?

Me, either. And, not seeing a bunch of these on the street, I'm guessing most people are passing.

If there is in fact a market for something beyond the Accord sedan in terms of versatility and capability, the best move would be to bring back the Accord station wagon. No, it wasn't much of a hit last time around, but wagons were at their low point in terms of appeal...there's a revival going on now. And the Accord's new larger platform could make for a truly useful machine.

A good looking one you could see out the back of.