Brand new or not, Hondas have always used high RPM starter motors to reduce cranking current and therefore voltage drop at the battery. This is as a result of their heritage as a motorcycle manufacturer. They also use tricks like lifting exhaust valves during cranking to drop the compression and get it to fire faster during the first few cylinder fills.

If your Accord is dropping enough battery voltage during cranking to cause the empeg to reset, then you have either got a dud battery out of the factory gates or there is something wrong with your charging circuit, ie. the main alternator regulator. My Mini (with a seriously crap old battery) cranks 55A @ 11.3V, and this is insufficiently low to cause a full re-boot.

At the risk of sounding like a know-it all car freak, I would measure your battery voltage during cranking (cold) and check this out, since it doesn't sound right. My neighbour has a two-year old Accord which cranks just under 30A @12.2V on his original battery, if this helps. And yes, I can quote these figures from memory 'cos I had to fix the damn thing two weeks back

Not every "ultra-reliable" Honda is 100% reliable, even from new; within one week of buying my CBR 600 in 1992, I had a battery failure, regulator failure, and gearbox oil seal failure - and no, I was not revving the nuts off it from cold, neither were the weather conditions especially bad, and after lashing somewhere near to 6 grand on my first new bike, I was looking after it properly

I would look again. You said it yourself - "straight off the lot" - but how long has it been on the lot? (An aside: I bought a "new" Rover 200 two years ago, and discovered it was actually brought into Holland almost one whole year before I drove it away. Where the hell had it been for that whole year?)

Do not presume even new cars are 100% - I seem to spend a significant proportion of my weekends fixing people's cars, including some new ones where the owners are rash enough to trust me over the garage and their warranty