Honda
SEMA 2009: Honda Celebrates 50 Years In North America With Classic Car Display in Las Vegas
Along with a selection of new vehicles outfitted with the company’s factory accessories, Honda also has on display a selection of vehicles highlighting the company’s successful past on the road and in motorsports. Included in that lineup are three particularly old school vehicles, including a 1974 Civic, an ’84 CRX and a ’71 N600. The…
SEMA 2009: Honda Announces Mugen Accessories for Accord
Honda used the Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA) Show to announce the introduction of a new line of Mugen Accessories for the 2010 Accord. Mugen has long been known as a performance parts company, building special edition cars for Honda as well as assisting in the company’s motorsports programs. The list of Mugen parts for…
Report: Honda Planning Two-Mode Hybrid System for Larger Cars
Slowly, Honda appears to be learning how the hybrid marketplace works. In a recent interview Honda CEO Takanobu Ito said that the company is working on more powerful two-mode hybrid systems (like the one used by Toyota) that will allow for the car to operate using either gas, electricity or a combination of both. Currently,…
Report: Next Generation Honda Civic Getting Major Last-Minute Changes
Honda is looking to make big changes across its product lineup, and the first model to go under the microscope is the next generation of the award winning and incredibly popular Civic. The Japanese automaker wants to make all of its vehicles more fuel efficient and less expensive, which will require significant changes to the…
Report: Honda CEO Wants to Build Green Sports Car, Slams Lexus LFA
Speaking to reporters at the Tokyo Auto Show, Honda CEO Takanobu Ito suggested that when the time is right he would like to build a “green” sports car. The Japanese automaker faces two big hurdles first, however: a lack of cash as well as insufficient technology. “Once we have that technology and once we have…
Tokyo 2009: Honda CR-Z Hybrid Coming to North America Next Year
Honda announced a production version of its CR-Z hybrid concept will be introduced to North America in the second half of 2010. As the second version of the CR-Z concept was unveiled at the Tokyo Auto Show, Honda announced the production version will be a sporty 2-seat hybrid, the first hybrid car set up with…
Report: Honda May Move Fit Production to U.S.
Honda is reportedly considering moving production of the sub-compact Fit to the U.S. Company president Takanobu Ito said the move is a “highly likely possibility.” The move makes good economic sense as the poor exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and Japanese Yen means that profit margins on the Fit are extremely slim. Moving production…
Report: Ford Catching Honda In Hybrid Sales Race
Ford is closing in on its Japanese rivals in the hybrid sales race. So far in 2009 the American automaker has posted a 73 percent gain in its hybrid sales with a total of 26,016 vehicles sold. That number is roughly 4,000 short of Honda’s total hybrid sales at 29,958 units, but the percentage of…
Report: 2010 Honda Crosstour Interior Images Released
Honda has just released images of the new 2010 Accord Crosstour’s interior and some details about a functional rear storage area. Inside, the new crossover gets a familiar Accord-like cockpit, but with a slightly thicker center console to give a more truck-like feel. As for the cargo area, it certainly looks massive (although no statistics…
Breaking: Honda to Close European Design Studio
Honda apparently doesn’t think much for European designs. The Japanese automaker has just announced that it will close its European design studio, located in Offenbach, near Frankfurt, Germany. This is the latest cost cutting measure by Honda to reduce operational losses. The R&D center is responsible for design of European Honda models as well as…
Tokyo Preview: Honda Skydeck Concept Van Gets Sliding Rear Doors and Front Lambo Doors
Honda’s latest concept car (van) that is scheduled to debut at the Tokyo Auto Show, looks like something you might see done to an Odyssey minivan at Hot Import Nights. The reason? It has both the typical minivan sliding rear doors, as well as front “Lambo-style” doors. Honda hasn’t released much info about the van,…
Tokyo Preview: Honda EV-N Concept Is One Ultra-Cute Electric Car
Honda intends to put the focus on its environmentally friendly alternative energy vehicles at the Tokyo Auto Show next month, showcasing several products, including the undeniably cute EV-N electric car concept. The car will be in display in the HELLO! Zone (which apparently stands for Honda Electric mobility Loop) next to the hydrogen fuel-cell FXC…
Tokyo Preview: Honda CR-Z Concept Is As Close to the Real Thing As Concepts Get
Honda has just announced that a revised version of its CR-Z hybrid hatchback will debut at the Tokyo Auto Show next month. Honda has already produced a concept version of this car, but the new one (shown above) is as close to production as concepts get. The design has been toned down just ever so…
Report: Honda Releases New Images of 2010 Accord Crosstour
Honda is trying hard to promote its new 2010 Accord Crosstour… too hard. The Japanese automaker decided to introduce the world to its new Accord-based crossover via Facebook, where through a free and democratic process people decided it was ugly. And because it is Facebook, people didn’t hold back on their comments. Then what became…
Report: Cash for Clunkers Boosts August Auto Sales
The U.S. auto industry showed continued improvement in the month of August, helped on by the Obama Administration’s Cash for Clunkers program. Ford was once again a big winner as sales increased 17.2 percent over last August, a significant improvement over the 2.4 percent growth in July – which was thought to be good at…
Report: 2010 Honda Accord Crosstour Officially Revealed
Honda has officially revealed the 2010 Accord Crosstour Crossover Utility Vehicle (CUV), which will go on sale this Fall, competing head-to-head with vehicles like the Toyota Venza. “Our concept is to broaden the appeal of the Accord line-up by leveraging traditional Accord strengths of fun-to-drive performance and handling while also adapting to dramatic shifts in…
Report: Honda Teases 2010 Accord Crosstour… Again
Honda has released two teaser images of the upcoming Accord Crosstour, which will debut on September 1st. The two images, showing a headlight and the front grille, give two very different ideas of what this Accord-based crossover will look like. The grille, while still very much an Accord design, seems slightly larger and more truck…
Report: Honda Planning Electric Car for U.S. by 2015
Honda is planning to bring an electric car to market in the U.S. by 2015. News comes from a company spokesman in Japan, as reported in the daily business paper Nikkei. The new model would be a minicar and rumors point to a concept or prototype of the electric Honda to debut at the Tokyo…
Report: Honda Teases 2010 Accord Crosstour
It’s official, Honda will debut the 2010 Accord Crosstour on September 1st and it will have… wheels and… tires. OK, so Honda’s teaser image isn’t much to go on, but knowing these sorts of manufacturer images, it was either this or some abstract of a headlight or door crease. Besides, spy photos of the upcoming…
Honda Announces Factory Support Program for Professional and Amateur Racers
Honda Performance Development (HPD), a division of Honda that is behind motorsports activities like the company’s American Le Mans Series efforts, is launching a new program to help both professional and amateur racers. Dubbed Honda Racing Line, this new grassroots motorsports initiative will allow members access to HPD and OEM products, as well as certain…
Report: Honda Fast-Tracking List of Updates to Improve Insight
According to the U.K.’s Autocar, Honda is fast-tracking a list of updates for the Insight originally scheduled for a mid-cycle makeover that’s still several years off. The focus of the changes will be to further improve fuel-economy, which while impressive at 40/43 mpg (city/highway), lags significantly behind the 2010 Prius and its 51/48 mpg rating….
Report: Acura NSX to Return as All-Wheel Drive Hybrid
The latest bit of Acura NSX gossip points to a return of the luxury Japanese automaker’s flagship sports car, but as an all-wheel drive hybrid. 7Tune is reporting from their sources that when the next generation NSX (known as the Advanced Sports Car Concept) was canned, it was actually more of a temporary matter as…
Report: Honda Boss Says Acura Doesn’t Need a Conventional Rear-Drive, V8 Sedan
Acura will not introduce a rear-drive, V8-powered luxury sedan as the automaker doesn’t need one. At least that’s what Honda president Takanobu Ito thnks. Ito told Automotive News that, “I don’t think we need a classic front-engine, rear-drive car.” Instead Ito believes Honda should chart its own course for Acura, which includes more fuel-efficient models,…
Honda Confirms CR-Z Hybrid and Fit Hybrid for 2010
Honda has just confirmed that it will build two additional hybrid models that will go on sale in Japan starting in February 2010. The first is the highly-anticipated CR-Z hybrid and the second is a hybrid version of the sub-compact Fit. Both models will use Honda’s IMA (Integrated Motor Assist) hybrid system, a less sophisticated…
