Category: Executive 
Price Range: £36,597 to £39,347
Remarkable road-holding and handling from Super Handling All-Wheel Drive system, clever safety technology, well finished and equipped, pleasingly compact for an executive car
Ride is too firm, auto transmission could be smoother, engine lacks the expected pulling power
An interesting and welcome alternative to the default-choice German offerings but spoilt by the drawbacks above. If you're going to be an individualist you'd make more of a statement with a Citroen C6.
Price range £36,250-£39,000. On sale in UK September 2006
An engine that has to rev and a heavy car (1,864kg without the option pack) together don't make for fuel economy. The official combined urban/extra-urban figure is 23.7mpg, with CO2 of 282g/km - the top car tax band, then.
Strangely, though, if you have the safety options the economy figure improves to 24.6mpg, because the electric power steering uses less energy than the standard car's hydraulic system (which we haven't sampled - it would be interesting to discover if it feels better). Honda quotes identical performance figures for both versions, however.
