Last week we showed you spy photos of the next-generation 2013 Honda Accord, caught out in the wild, but heavily camouflaged from the windows down. That left us speculating as to what exactly Honda had in store for its new Accord sedan.
We may have caught a glimpse over the weekend near Honda’s Torrance, California, headquarters. Doing some late-night testing, this gold-painted and lightly camouflaged Honda sedan sports a couple of things we couldn’t see last week. First, the nose appears radically different here, and much more similar to the Honda Concept C shown earlier this year at the Beijing Auto Show. It also goes against our impression of last week’s photo, which didn’t appear to have any of the “jowls” of the Accord Coupe Concept or the Crosstour Concept, both of which were shown at U.S. auto shows earlier this year.
So what gives? Two possible explanations. First, the car shown here is clearly a plug-in prototype, judging from the extra “fuel” door on the front left fender. So it’s possible that Honda will be giving its plug-in model more radical styling than the standard gasoline-powered models, similar to how competitor Hyundai saved its cooler styling for the Sonata Hybrid. The other explanation is that Honda simply had an older-style nose on the car from last week, in an effort to throw off spy photographers.
Either way, we’ll get a closer look at the 2013 Honda Accord in a few months when the car is officially revealed for the first time.
Photos: Nicholas Bailey
