You know what cars were once positively ubiquitous, and are now more rare than a lion’s lunch? Third-generation Honda Accords. You may remember these as the ones that had the cool pop-up headlights. These were once everywhere, and I feel like everyone knew someone who had one of these. My dad had a sea foam green coupé one, it was among the cooler cars he ever owned. I had friends in college with them, mostly the coupés, it seems, but sedans and hatchbacks, too. I have a lot of fond nostalgia for these cars, which may be why this brochure caught my eye.
Oh that, and the fact that the cars seem to be parked in front of colossal, moldy meatballs.
Seriously! Look at these things!
I guess they’re supposed to be mountains or rocky outcroppings of some sort, but the texture and color and shape reminds me more of what a big wad of meatball might look like if left on a windowsill for a week or so. Maybe that’s supposed to be moss or lichen on there, but it sure seems more like mold, big robust colonies of molds, enjoying the nutritious bounty of mount meatball!
This brochure, from 1988, also is a nice showcase of the craft of layout and design of that era; Photoshop did not yet really exist at this point; very early incarnations were around in 1998, but the initial, 1.0 release wasn’t until February of 1990. I think it’s safe to say that most of the image editing work done on this brochure was done using analog tools, not digital ones.
But a lot was done! The cars are clearly cut from their original photographic backgrounds and placed into new ones, and I suspect this is just very skilled X-acto work. Look at this, for example:
The crisp edges, that very rectangular, hard-edged shadow, all of these point to a designer with a steady hand and a sharp knife. Let’s look again at the moldy meatball pages:
Look at the attention paid to the windows and the seats, how carefully cut out everything is, so you can see through the windows. Look at the car in the background, too – lots of careful window-cutting work there, too!
It’s so easy to take for granted how easy have it now – the latest versions of Photoshop actually have very capable object-selecting and removal tools, and we use those extensively here, as putting text and other images behind elements in a photo is intoxicating, and I’m a bit drunk on it. It’s fun, I make no apologies here.
Let’s get back to these Accords, though, and their fantastic pop-up headlights! I really like how Honda explains their benefits here, citing the aerodynamic benefits, and then noting that by being able to be retracted, the setup “protects headlights form stones and road debris when not in use.” This is true, sure, but I’m not sure how much this was really thought through: yes, sure, it would protect that sealed-beam headlight, but what damage would a headlight-smashing rock do to the headlight cover and plastic trim? I guarantee whatever it takes to fix that would be many times the cost of just buying a new rectangular headlamp at the nearest K-Mart for $5.99.
Also, here’s something I never knew: in Japan, the upmarket version of the Accord was known as the Vigor, and that one had the pop-up headlights seen on Accords just about everywhere else in the world. So, to differentiate the fancier Vigor from the more plebian Accords, those Japanese Accords, known as Accord CAs, had fixed headlights:
They look pretty decent, and are similar to Civics of that era, too, but don’t have the drama of the retractable headlamps. I had no idea these existed! There’s always something new to learn, isn’t there!
I hope your weekend is free of moldy meatballs, but full of pop-up headlights.
That’s not a meatball, It’s Chet from Weird Science!
Despite having so, so many of these Accords in my life nobody I knew had the hatchback two door version. And I think if I was of driving age in the mid-late 80s and had any money, I would have bought one immediately.
Twenty years ago I worked at an engineering company with a drafter who was formerly a graphic artist for a marketing industry. She did stuff like cutting out things with a razor blade before computers took over. When computers took over she transitioned into making rastor images and eventually started doing CAD because it paid far better. She had the steadiest hand I have ever seen, freehanding impossibly straight lines with ease. She had some pretty funny stories about using food to simulate land features, much like the meatball mountain above.
Sports cars could always use the lexan versions with quartz bulbs for lighter weight.
I still see a handful of these beasts running on what has to be 500k-600k miles in the hood side of town. People gotta get places and they run. The last one I saw was a metallic beige-silver number with a bubbling rear window that that car color sites say is “Seattle Silver Metallic.”
Sadly, they’re predicting just enough snow Sunday night to most likely trigger a saltening of the roads, and since they’re not quite clean yet anyway I think the pop-ups are going to have to stay in storage a little while longer. :-/
This truly is the worst time of the year. We had a downpour a couple weeks ago that I thought maybe was enough to clean the road in one go. As usual, it wasn’t, and it ain’t rained since…. Torture
Yeah, we’ve had multiple solid rainstorms here lately, and yet when I was out at the storage building last night there’s still a giant pile of salt sitting on the exit ramp from the highway.
The Vigor/CA headlights might’ve been considered upscale because they were a peek at the coming model year’s move from standard sized sealed beams and toward wide low-profile headlight styling across Honda and Acura.
While not as wide/low, the 2nd gen Accord and Vigor (prior to this gen) also had composite headlights globally too, just North America had sealed beams, being a few years away from composites at that point.
Just last night we had a little get-together at a local retro bar and had an ’87 Accord hatchback in attendance. I drove a Laguna Gold 1988 DX hatchback all through college, identical to the gold hatch in the picture.
And never forget that the 1989 Accord is the one and only time the best-selling car in America featured popup headlights.
I saw one of these Accords driving around about a week ago. My head snapped around faster than if it had been a Lamborghini.
Honda sold the vigor stateside as well. They just slapped an Acura badge on it for some reason though.
Yes, Acura Vigor! It had a 5 cylinder engine as well
Yes – One generation later.
In Japan – there was the Vigor, with the narrow grille – and the Inspire, with the wider grille.
What a coincidence – I’m going to Costa Rica tomorrow and this morning I was randomly looking at Google Street View in the area I’m staying and found one of these Accords:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/YwPqk1XfRVBmCnJD9
The 2 door hatchback coupes might be peak automotive design. I wish something like that was on the market today. The next generation’s coupes were sedan-like in the rear… what a waste.
We also didn’t get the Aerodeck version of those – which was shaped more like a big Civic hatch.
I had an ’86 Accord LX for a while. Great car and one of the reasons I am such a fan of peak era Honda.
Was gonna make a moldy meatball joke here.
But it’s finally Friday in the land of never ending shit storms.
Sometimes it just seems better to take the high road?
I had one of these back in college (the car, not the moldy meatball). 1989 Accord LXi, 4 door with the 5-speed. Still one of the best car’s I’ve ever owned, fun to drive, great mileage and utterly reliable. Bought it for $4k with a bit less than 100k on the clock, used it for 3 or 4 years, traded it in at a bit over 200k and got 3k in trade towards a Contour SVT. Probably not my best automotive decision. The SVT was fun but reliability was… let say tenuous at best.
I still miss that Accord.
My driving instructor (thank you Lawrie) had an Accord Aerodeck with pop-up headlights. Since most of my friends’ instructors used basic Nissan Micras or Austin Metros it was quite a flex.
The meatballs look like hand samples of botryoidal malachite (the green stuff) and probably calcite (the white stuff) on a matrix of something not as easily identified from these images but I’ll play the odds and say limonite.
If I’m wrong, well, in my defense…
https://xkcd.com/3068/
Any xkcd reference pretty much merits a star.
Wow… I had forgotten about that site. I used to check it out all the time!
Lots of photo lab trickery, as well; depending on what kind of background you shot on, you could print an internegative or interpositive to cut the car out without the blade. Or requiring only touch-ups from the blade.
Look at the transfer modes in Photoshop and After Effects, they’re named after the analog/chemical processes a lot of the time.
I have made judicious use of Luma keys in my video career and that shit is OLD.
IIRC, the headlights were counterbalanced, so when my friend’s pop-up mechanism broke, the headlight remained up. When she braked hard, it would close, then pop back up.
Looks like our x-acto layout person decided to use some photos of an eight or so inch chunk of malachite-bearing rock to create their alien desert. A desert that evidently had its sands melted to a flat, sandy-tan sheet of glass, maybe by nuclear blast? And only those with Vigor remained.
Have you forgotten the U.S.-market Acura Vigor? Of course you have. I only remember it because my boss had one.
Came here to say the same thing. My neighbor bought a brand new one in the very early ’90s.
I remember the ads, so they were sold in the US for at least a year.
“Is ziss Deutches auto?”
“Nein! Acura!”
I have not forgotten. Five-cylinder engine, longitudinal, BUT front wheel drive, with a driveshaft going through the crankcase to reach one of the wheels.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/1992-1994-acura-vigor-history-specs-photos/
It was from some time later. Mid to late 90s I think.
Met a person back then quite proud of her Vigor. License plate read “Vim And” in a nod to JFK.
They were of the following generation.
And the generation after that they became the “Acura TL” here – Honda Saber in Japan
I was hoping for pop up meatballs.
Have a little more respect for the site where Tasha Yar died an empty death. A death without purpose.
It totally had a purpose.
Denise Crosby wanted out of her contract.
And Armus wanted to be amused thru suffering.
Like some other people we know today.
I had many friends with these back in the day. If you rocked the headlight actuator switch back and forth, you could get the headlights to pop and retract rapidly at inverse to each other, like Marty Feldman on crack. It was hilarious.
When I was a Honda Tech back in the 80’s we would do that on new Hondas during the PDI service. Shameful but fun.
That’s not a moldy meatball, that’s silica lifeform you ugly bag of mostly water! (Facepalm)
I approve this comment (because I get the reference).
I sure hope you do with that handle.
Do you have nightmares where Bruce Maddox dismantles you?
I dream I’m a bird soaring through the corridors of the Enterprise D while my father fashions metallic bird wings in a forge. I glide onto the bridge and through the ceiling out into the cosmos taking in the majesty of the nebulae and stars around me.
God I hate that episode.
But they did make it funny on Lower Decks.
Temba, his arms wide!
The previously unseen male horta. Green bits instead of red due to sexual dimorphism.
Ah, yes, Janos Prohaska FTW! He actually came up with the costume himself and demonstrated it in the studio which resulted in him getting the part. Fun fact(s): he played a gorilla in several episodes of Gilligan’s Island and was a stunt double in the film It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for Peter Falk when he played a taxi driver and Arnold Stang when he played one of the hapless proprietors of the gas station destroyed by Jonathan Winters.