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1997 Acura Integra Type R sells for $82,000 on Bring a Trailer

Acura Integra Type R prices are getting ridiculous. The car is absolutely superb, but the latest one to sell on Bring a Trailer went for a cool $82,000. You could likely pick up two old Acura NSXs in average condition for a similar price as the single Integra Type R. But hey, nobody ever said the value of cars made sense. Why did this particular Type R reach unrivaled heights then? A few factors are obvious. It’s a one-owner, 6,000-mile, completely original 1997 ITR (what the cool kids call the Integra Type R for short). WeÂ’re still rather flabbergasted and slightly upset the original buyer only managed 6,000 miles over the approximately 22 years of ownership, but the new owner could fix that quickly. Then again, this could be a purely speculative buy, aiding heavily in the final gavel price. Wait a few months to a year, and the value of this unmolested Type R could increase another $10,000, or more if you donÂ’t add miles. It was only a year ago to date that we wrote in near-shock about a Type R with even fewer miles (1,200) going for $63,800 at Barrett-Jackson. This car blows that previous record straight out of the water. As of now, thereÂ’s no end in sight to the increasing prices of these now-slightly-old hot Hondas. Another clean Acura Integra Type R is listed on Bring a Trailer right now, and the bid is already up to $34,567 with four days left. That car has 19,000 miles on it, and is reportedly being offered by the carÂ’s second owner, who bought it two years ago. A Honda CRX Si recently went for $33,600 on the same website. The NSXÂ’s value jump hit hard a few years ago, but now its successors are following in its footsteps again. Will there come a day when an Integra Type R hits the six-digit mark? At this rate it doesnÂ’t look far away. If you want a whole lot of what the Type R offers, without the eye-watering markup, take a long, hard look at the Integra GS-R. That trim is a great step up in performance over a base Integra, and a few easy mods gets it close to the Type R from a performance standpoint. You wonÂ’t have the cache and bragging rights that come with the R, but you also wonÂ’t be afraid to put miles on it for fear of entirely ruining the carÂ’s value. Happy Honda hunting.

Child cobalt miners: Automakers pledge ethical minerals sourcing for EVs

BERLIN - Leading carmakers including Volkswagen and Toyota pledged on Wednesday to uphold ethical and socially responsible standards in their purchases of minerals for an expected boom in electric vehicle production. Demand for minerals such as cobalt, graphite and lithium is forecast to soar in the coming years as governments crack down on vehicle pollution and carmakers step up their investments in electric models. To cover its plans for more than 80 new models by 2025, Volkswagen alone is looking for partners in China, Europe and North America to provide battery cells and related technology worth more than 50 billion euros ($59 billion). Talks with major cobalt producers, including Glencore, at VW's Wolfsburg headquarters last week ended without a deal. More than half of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country racked by political instability and legal opacity, and where child labor is used in mines. On Wednesday, a group of 10 leading passenger-car and truck manufacturers announced an initiative to jointly identify and address ethical, environmental, human and labor rights issues in raw materials sourcing. The partnership dubbed "Drive Sustainability" consists of VW, Toyota Motor Europe, Ford, Daimler, BMW, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo Cars and truckmakers Scania and Volvo. The alliance "will assess the risks posed by the top raw materials (such as mica, cobalt, rubber and leather) in the automotive sector," said Stefan Crets of the CSR Europe business network. "This will allow Drive Sustainability to identify the most impactful activities to pursue" to address issues within the supply chain.Reporting by Andreas Cremer.Related Video: Image Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images Green BMW Ford Honda Jaguar Land Rover Mercedes-Benz Automakers Toyota Volkswagen Volvo Green Automakers Green Culture Electric Scania ethics mining

Nissan Rogue gives brand rare monthly sales lead over Honda

The five top-selling brands in the automotive industry are usually Ford, Toyota, Chevy, Honda and Nissan, in that order. This lineup emerged intact when counting a year's worth of sales for 2013, and there was no reason to expect it would change at the beginning of 2014. But it did. Thanks to surging sales of its all-new Rogue, Nissan managed to pull ahead of Honda to become the fourth best-selling auto brand in January 2014, selling 81,472 units (an increase of 10.41 percent compared to January 2013) to Honda's 80,808 (a decrease of 3.96 percent).
The Rogue led the way for Nissan, contributing an additional 4,880 units in January compared to the same month last year - a 54.5-percent increase for a grand total of 13,831 units. But the Rogue had help, with the Frontier pickup adding an extra 2,307 units (an 87.9-percent increase), the Juke an extra 1,081 units (a 45.8-percent increase), the Altima an extra 1,051 units (a 4.9-percent increase) and the Maxima an additional 983 units (a 32.9-percent increase). Honda, meanwhile, was hurt by falling sales of the Accord (down 13.9 percent) and Pilot (down 7.6 percent), and stagnant sales of the Civic.
Honda, however, should take pride in the fact that it's luxury division, Acura, outsold Infiniti, Nissan's luxury division, last month - 10,823 units sold to 8,998. That margin of victory was large enough to keep the parent company of American Honda ahead of Nissan North America for the month of January.