Here’s a beautiful Honda Accord sedan, seen in Beijing in the autumn of 2018. The Accord looked perfect for its age, painted white with the original wheels, and featuring very special white Beijing license plates.
The White License Plates
Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen issued white license plates for passenger cars in 2002 and 2003 as part of an experiment where citizens could create their own alphabetical/numerical combinations.
The experiment ended after citizens got too creative, choosing combinations like “sex,” “CIA,” “FBI,” and the infamous “USA-911”, which appeared on a Beijing car after the September 11 attacks in New York.
Authorities then canceled the experiment but allowed owners to keep the non-offensive plates. The Honda Accord has 京A HKH-989. “京” is short for 北京, Běijīng.
The Guangzhou-Honda Accord
The sixth-generation Honda Accord was the first generation of Accord that was made in China. Production started in 1999 at Guangzhou-Honda.
Guangzhou-Honda (广州本田) is a joint venture between Guangzhou Auto and Honda Motor, founded in 1998. In 2009, the company changed its name to GAC-Honda (广汽本田). GAC is short for Guangzhou Automobile Corporation.
The manufacturer wrote Guangzhou in Chinese characters and Honda in Latin script.
Later, the Chinese government required all carmakers to use only Chinese script, even for foreign brand names. The policy changed again afterward, allowing manufacturers to use both Chinese and Latin script simultaneously — the full name in Chinese and the full name in Latin letters.
The interior
Wow! The interior looked just as good as the exterior. It has the original leather seats, with leather trim on the doors, and decent-quality black plastics. Uniquely, the owner of this car didn’t install any seat covers. The center stack is in great shape, too, with 3 tiny LCD screens and a CD player.
The floor mats are not original, but that’s really the only new thing. The rear bench seems barely used. There’s a lot of leg room, and the windows are large compared to many modern cars. Note the pretty aluminium door handle.
The window sticker & markings
The green sticker says: 绿色环保车: Green Environmentally Friendly Car. And below it says: 只能使用93号以上无铅汽油: Can only use 93-octane or higher unleaded gasoline. That was impressive in 1999!
Stamped in the window is the 广州 HONDA brand name. The FY logo is for Fuyao Glass Industry Group, one of the world’s largest automotive glass producers. The SG logo stands for Safety Glass.
It’s part of China’s automotive glass certification system. The marking indicates that the glass meets national safety standards for tempered or laminated automotive glass.
Honda Accord – specifications
Guangzhou-Honda offered two four-cylinder petrol engines for the Accord: a 2.0 and a 2.3. The car in the photos has the 2.3 under the hood.
A VTEC sticker on the rear window. VTEC stands for Variable Valve Timing and Lift Electronic Control. It’s Honda’s system for adjusting valve timing and lift to improve power and efficiency.
The 2.3 VTi VTEC model had an output of 157 hp (117 kW) and 206 Nm. Honda coupled the engine to a 4-speed automatic gearbox, like in this car, or to a five-speed manual. The Accord’s top speed was an impressive 212 km/h and 0-100 tok 9.8 seconds.
Today, the sixth-generation Honda Accord is a rare car in China. It is largely forgotten, too – definitely not a museum-quality car. Happily, a few are still around, and this white example is one of the best that I have ever seen.