Dateline Palos Verdes, California: Guess what, automotive blogosphere, Honda's Accord Crosstour is not the design catastrophe you so deliriously predicted.

Prior to the new Crosstour's traditional introduction, Honda, rather innocently, released early images of the Crosstour on Facebook. However, these social networks can often be less than sociable gatherings. Snap a finger, and a bunch of collegial car-loving "friends" can transform into a pack of frenzied piranhas. And on their menu last September was the complicated-looking Crosstour, which was spilling blood in the water even before it was properly introduced to the mainstream press. Okay, so just about every car company these days is upping the ante with their online stripteasing, leaking a photo here, releasing a gallery to a social network there, but this time, the viral publicity machine chose to bite back -- and bite back hard. Oh, for the days when a new car was revealed to the world with one mighty whiskaway of a black sheet at a major car show.

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