LeBlanc says he's 90 percent sure it won't be a Honda.

He's shopped Toyota, Hyundai and Kia lately, and when I spoke with him last week, he was leaning toward Toyota. LeBlanc says Honda requires moving up too many trim levels to get features like Bluetooth, and the Accord is too noisy.

Noise “has been a knock on Honda for how many years now,” LeBlanc asks. “It doesn't seem to be a concern of theirs. I don't anticipate them to be any different [in the future].”

Honda rolled out standard Bluetooth for some newer models like the redesigned CR-V. And any car with six figures on the odometer — like LeBlanc's '01 Accord — won't be silent as a library on the highway. But he has a point. A four-cylinder Accord EX placed fifth out of eight in Cars.com's $25,000 Family Sedan Shootout two years ago, with road noise a recurring complaint. Even today's Accord requires stepping up to the leather-clad EX-L trim for Bluetooth.

So LeBlanc will likely jump ship. He isn't the only one: Shoppers by the thousands are choosing competitors over the Accord, once a must-drive for anyone shopping family cars.

Experts point to a number of reasons for this. Inventory shortages after Japan's earthquake affected sales through the end of 2011. But the issues go beyond inventory. The Accord's position atop the family-sedan segment — in a perpetual rivalry with the Toyota Camry — could shift if Honda doesn't chart the right course.

A redesigned 2013 Accord hits dealerships this fall. It remains under wraps, but Honda foreshadowed it in January with the Accord coupe concept. The redesign will be smaller and lighter, Honda says, with a host of crash-avoidance technology and a reprisal of the Accord Hybrid. The competition, however, is fiercer than ever. Honda needs to make up lost ground in a lot of areas to retain owners like LeBlanc and pick up some new ones.

Falling Sales
The Camry has owned the family-car segment since 2001, when the Accord last beat it out. Honda strung together nine years at No. 2, but then hamstrung by low inventory after Japan's earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, the Accord slipped to No. 3, bested by the Camry and Nissan Altima. It took until early December for Honda to sort out inventory issues.

But sales continued to fall. The automaker threw upwards of $1,000 in dealer cash atop discount financing to keep interest in the 5-year-old car, but the competition ratcheted up its appeal to match. J.D. Power and Associates data show nearly a quarter of Accord buyers cross-shop the Camry; about one in five shop the Altima. A redesigned Camry steamed into dealerships last October, and by spring, Nissan had thrown up to $2,250 on the aging Altima's hood. It worked: Sales through March boomed 39% for the Altima and 37% on the Camry. In the same span, the Accord fell 8%.

Put another way, one in every 6.7 family cars sold a year ago was an Accord. Today that's fallen to around one in 10. The Accord isn't in second place anymore. It's slipped to fourth, falling behind the Ford Fusion which will also be redesigned this year.

Accord’s Share of Family Cars
Year

• Competes with: Ford Escape, Honda CR-V, Hyundai Tucson
• Looks like: Cleaner-looking nose, more chrome trim
• Drivetrain: 148-hp, 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine and five-speed manual or CVT
• Hits dealerships: This summer

Mitsubishi's smallest crossover and best-selling vehicle gets slightly refreshed for 2013. Aside from exterior styling tweaks and a revised suspension, the Outlander Sport’s unlovable continuously variable automatic transmission gets recalibrated for the second time since the vehicle’s model-year 2011 debut.

More 2012 New York Auto Show Coverage

The compact crossover's face gets updated with a tweaked grille, new fog lamp design, black side sills and revised bumpers. Eighteen-inch wheels are newly standard across all trim levels, replacing 16s on base models.

• Federal officials are expanding their Ford investigation of stuck throttles, The Detroit News reports. The original probe included 360,000 2005-'06 Ford Taurus sedans and 14 consumer complaints. Detached cruise-control cables resulted in engines revving and, in some cases, trouble stopping the car. Today's expansion adds the 2001-'05 Taurus and Mercury Sable, affecting 1.92 million vehicles in all — “a broader population in order to obtain a basis for comparison,” a spokeswoman from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told The Detroit News.
• After posting record annual profits in 2011, BMW said it expects to beat its 2011 sales record — 1.67 million cars worldwide — in 2012 on the strength of a redesigned 3 Series and other revamped products. The German automaker also expects profits to follow, Bloomberg News reports. Pretax profits should beat last year's 7.38 billion euros ($9.72 billion at current exchange rates), BMW forecasted today, outpacing analysts' expectations of a modest profit drop. In contrast, German rivals Volkswagen and Daimler (which owns Mercedes-Benz) forecasted profits to remain flat for the year. BMW cited record sales for January and February, with plans to roll out 12 new or improved BMW or Mini products worldwide by summer.
• In the first of three public hearings on last month's distracted-driving proposals, carmakers told federal officials to address consumer electronics inside the car — smartphones, for example — rather than focus on dashboard displays alone, The Detroit News reports. The guidelines call for curtailing systems that allow manual text messaging, navigation address entry and other functions while the car is moving. NHTSA said last month it will consider more guidelines for aftermarket devices and consumer electronics.
• New York Knicks rising star Jeremy Lin may sign a contract with Volvo to endorse the brand's luxury cars in China, Bloomberg News reports. Sources told Bloomberg that Volvo's owner, Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., was in talks with Lin over a possible deal.