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Ford, Toyota clean up in Best Car For The Money Awards

The U.S. News Best Cars for the Money Awards picks winners by looking at the average transaction price, five-year total cost of ownership, the regard a car has from the automotive press, reliability figures from J.D. Power and Associates and safety data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The result, according to the magazine, is "the best combination of critical acclaim and long-term value."
Ford nabbed six of the 21 categories that received awards this year, the Focus, Fusion, Fusion Hybrid, Taurus, Escape and Edge getting trophies. Toyota and its Lexus and Scion sub-brands took another five, the Tacoma and Tundra owning the two categories given to pickup trucks. The other ten awards were split between Honda with three, Buick with two, and one each for Subaru, BMW, Hyundai, Chevrolet and Mazda.
Follow the link to see all the winners and read about why they were chosen.

Acura ILX Type S could get 300-hp turbo four

There's good news and bad news when it comes to the new Honda Civic Type R. The good news is that after more than a year of prototypes and concepts, the Japanese automaker's new hot hatch is about to make its production debut next month. The bad news is that it's not coming here, but there is a silver lining in even that dark rain cloud – namely, that Honda plans on slotting its 2.0-liter VTEC turbo four into something that it will actually offer Stateside. Earlier rumors suggested the US donor vehicle would also be a Civic, but the latest intel indicates it could be something different, albeit related. According to Car and Driver, which spoke recently with Acura product planning manager Gary Robinson, Honda's luxury division could be gearing up to shoehorn the engine into the recently updated ILX – which itself is based on the Civic. "Acura is always going to get the best engines Honda makes," said Robinson. "Obviously a 2.0-liter turbo is more of a must-have in the luxury world than it is in the mainstream" market, suggesting that an ILX Type S could be in the works with upwards of 300 horsepower. Getting it to fit, though, could prove a rather large challenge – and could mean the engine swap would have to wait until the next-generation model comes around. Considering that the ILX was just updated for 2016, C/D doesn't expect the full redesign to come until 2018 at the earliest. Here's hoping that if it takes that long, Honda will slot the engine into something else for US showrooms in the meantime. The revival of the Type S badge in and of itself, however, makes for an enticing prospect. The last time we saw it used was on the larger TL sedan, which upgraded the 3.2-liter V6 from the 225 horsepower to 260. Before that, the RSX jumped from 160 horsepower in the base model to 200 in the first Type S, 210 in the second and 217 in the ultimate Type R. As it stands, the new ILX (after dropping the hybrid and base 2.0 models, is powered exclusively by a 2.4-liter inline four with 201 hp on tap.

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.