24 Oct 05
The Honda Legend is hardly a car to raise the pulse.
If you were in the market for something big and luxurious, you'd almost certainly want something with a bit more personality, more kudos. Leave the Legend to its Japanese and US buyers, for whom it was really created, and stick to something European and image-rich.
So I'm driving the all-new Legend on a fast but devilishly twisty and three-dimensional road, a road which snakes and surprises as if it were the Nürburgring itself. It is, in fact, Honda's Takasu test track on the big, climatically extreme island of Hokkaido, where temperatures of 30ºC, both minus and plus, are commonplace at opposite ends of the year.
This new Legend is slightly smaller than the last one (not necessarily a good thing in the land of luxury cars) and it must be said that it's feeling like a blancmange. A heavy blancmange at that; the 3.5-litre V6 engine may have had a surprising 40% power hike (making 300bhp), but this Japanese-spec car still doesn't feel very lively.
I've cranked it up to a good lick, though, and over the crest is a long, fast, downhill left-hander. I turn in, pour in some power and... what's this? The Legend is hooked into the road and powering through with not a trace of tyre-scuffing understeer. In fact it's cornering in a slightly tail-out stance, all forces channelled towards hauling the Honda through the curve as cleanly and quickly as possible.
Now, here's a fast but fully right-angled right-left jink at the bottom of a valley. The sight line is perfect, but to make things extra-interesting there's a bump on the way in just where I want to start braking. Turn in, hard; the nose does exactly what it's told, the tail follows tidily and we flow through at what I'd have thought is an impossibly optimistic speed.
