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

• Volkswagen, the Detroit Three and other automakers drafted a plan to speed the implementation of alternatives to nylon resin, which the industry uses for brake and fuel lines, Bloomberg News reports. An explosion March 31 at Evonik Industry's Germany plant cut global production of a chemical in the resin by 50 percent, raising the specter of production shutdowns until other companies stepped up alternative supplies. Car shoppers, join the industry in a collective sigh of relief.
• GM CEO Dan Akerson called the automaker's European Opel division a “four-alarm fire” today. GM's European units, which include Opel, have lost $747 million in 2011 and more than $14 billion since 1999. Akerson spoke at a conference in Beijing, saying it will be “a while” before the automaker can fix Opel, according to Automotive News. Falling consumer confidence amid an ongoing debt crisis has stymied auto sales in Europe, leaving the continent's auto industry with at least 20% too much capacity, by some estimates. We have a handful of GM-badged Opels here, including the Buick Regal and the erstwhile Saturn Astra, so keep an eye on this.
• Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn told Bloomberg News Monday that the strength of the Japanese yen represents a “1,000-pound gorilla” for the automaker's profitability. With the fiscal year ending in March, analysts expect Nissan's revenue to break 10 trillion yen for the first time since 2008. The yen, which traded around 81 to the dollar today, spent most of the 2000s trading in the hundreds; it has prompted Nissan to shift production out of Japan, like moving Infiniti manufacturing to China and the U.S.
• Fitch Ratings bumped Ford's credit to investment grade, taking the automaker's debt out of junk status for the first time since 2005, The Detroit News reports. Fitch cited improved products and financial performance — no doubt highlighted by 10 consecutive quarters of profits, and potentially 11 after Ford reports first-quarter profits this Friday. The new rating should allow Ford to issue debt at lower rates, which will ultimately help the Blue Oval stay in the black.

GM’s track record has been less than stellar. First we had the Saturn Vue Green Line, a very “mild” hybrid that paled next to competitors like the Ford Escape. Next came the extraordinarily expensive 2-mode hybrid system used in GM’s pickup trucks and full-sized SUVs, which cost far too much and delivered far too little. Finally, we have the Volt – ’nuff said. No wonder GM’s latest hybrid endeavor has come to market with little fanfare, no “hybrid” logos on the vehicle and no hybrid branding from GM. Can we honestly call the 2012 Buick LaCrosse eAssist a hybrid?

While the LaCrosse’s styling is dominated by slab sides and FWD proportions, the overall look is handsome, even elegant. Compared to the ES350, the Buick looks a touch more sedate while looking less like its kissing cousin the Chevy Malibu. The fairly high belt-line and increasingly popular four-door-coupe roof-line give the 16.5 foot long Buick an almost modern flair (without being so modern as to drive away traditional Buick shoppers.) Despite the modern styling, Buick has stuck to their dubious “ventiports” which make even less sense now than before with our 4-cylinder LaCrosse sporting six portholes. Maybe port 5 represents the motor and 6 is the battery?

While the new LaCrosse’s interior is not class leading in any way, it is uniquely styled. Personally I’m not a fan of the steeply sloped doors but the 40-inches of rear leg room may compensate for that. The dashboard in our tester sported Buick’s new “stitched” dash which is an injection molded plastic dash that has “cuts”

While GM has given most of its attention lately to Buick and Chevrolet — with new models such as the Buick Verano and Chevy Sonic — GMC was left to soldier on with no new models last year. Even so, the brand was GM’s fastest growing for 2011, and GMC remains the carmaker’s second-largest make in America.

2012 Chicago Auto Show Coverage

With that sort of track record, it’s no surprise that the carmaker is focusing more attention on giving GMC its own distinctive look — the brand currently consists of nothing more than slightly reworked Chevy trucks, SUVs and crossovers. The Acadia large crossover was one of the first GMCs to wear its own sheet metal, distinctive from Chevrolet, and it is the first model to get the brand’s new signature face.

The new face reminds us of the GMC Granite concept first seen at the 2010 Detroit auto show. There’s a large, squared-off, three-bar grille and a new, more chiseled hood. The more-elegant-yet-masculine appearance looks great and is far more distinctive than the previous-generation Acadia, which looked anonymous among other GMCs. It also looks better than the GMC Terrain, whose faux brawny look always gave me a vibe of a boy wearing his father’s suit.

GMC also showed off the Denali trim now instead of waiting to unveil it later. The Denali trim makes up some 30% of all Acadia sales. On this crossover, Denali means nothing more than some body-colored panels, more chrome garnishes and larger wheels. Still, both trims look great.

Inside, the Acadia gets a new upper dash design featuring more padded materials, fake metal satin trim and stitchings. It looks a bit more premium, but touching the materials proves the updates are aesthetic only; most are still hard to the touch. The new touch-screen features capacitive buttons — like those found in the 2013 Chevy Malibu Eco — and LCD readouts in the temperature control knobs lend a nice, upscale feel. Besides those changes, most of the rest of the cabin will look and feel the same to current owners of the Acadia, Chevy Traverse or Buick Enclave.

Out back, the redesigned rear end might look familiar to owners of the now-defunct Saturn Outlook, which was based off the same platform as the Acadia. The rearview glass wraps around to the rear-quarter panels, and an unexposed D-pillar (it’s still there, just covered in glass) gives the Acadia a more elongated look from afar.

The mild hybrid system is a re-engineered version of the hybrid powertrain in the old Malibu and now-defunct Saturn Aura sedan and Vue compact SUV. It was a flop for GM due to elevated prices and disappointing fuel-economy figures.

The new system debuted in Buick's LaCrosse for 2012 and combines a 2.4-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine with a lithium-ion battery-powered electric motor for 182 total horsepower. Its regenerative braking system and engine start/stop functionality also help save fuel, but the Eco cannot run solely on battery power. GM estimates the Malibu Eco will get 25/37 mpg city/highway.

The Malibu Eco starts at $25,235, excluding a $760 destination fee. The 2013 Eco model will be joined by two new engines later in the year: a 2.5-liter four-cylinder and turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder.

The 2013 Malibu is GM's first global midsize sedan; it plans to sell it in nearly 100 countries.