2015 Honda Accord on 2040-cars

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YouTube viewers prefer BMW

BMW owners sometimes get a bad rap as being snobbish, rude drivers, but according to a new study by the online marketing company ZEFR, Bimmer aficionados also have a close relationship with the brand's vehicles. With well over 4 billion YouTube views, the German automaker is the industry's king of the road online. Making the popularity even sweeter for marketers, 95 percent of those clicks are for fan videos, which represents loads of free advertising. BMW isn't the only automaker with such an extensive following. Honda comes in a close second with around 4 billion views, and Mercedes-Benz is just a little behind it. Among all brands, it's the norm for fan-made videos rather than the official ones to get the lion's share of the clicks, generally 95 percent or more. "YouTube has become a treasure trove for connecting with the right people for automakers," Dave Rosner, ZEFR marketing boss, said to Automotive News. Beyond just a popularity contest among brands, automotive videos are big business on YouTube, according to ZEFR's research. Enthusiasts are leading the way, too. Racing is by far the most-watched category with 895,000 clips generating a staggering 8.2 billion views. Classic cars are also a very hot topic with 305,000 videos getting 1.6 billion clicks. Surprisingly, when it comes to watching auto videos, sedans are most popular on YouTube with over 9 billion views, according to Automotive News. Meanwhile, SUVs, performance vehicles, and pickups were each around 3 billion or less. You can check out the full study for yourself, as a PDF, here. Related Video:

2015 Honda CR-V

Predicting the future direction of Honda's compact CR-V would have been difficult based on the Civic-derived model that first arrived on our shores for the 1997 model year. The newcomer, selling alongside the body-on-frame Passport (a hastily rebadged Isuzu Rodeo), was a cute compact crossover with four doors and an awkward curb-side hinged tailgate thanks to its Japanese home-market design. The five-passenger CUV offered generous interior room, but its wheezy 2.0-liter four-cylinder, with an output of just 126 horsepower and 133 pound-feet of torque, required 11.7 seconds to bring the 3,153-pound vehicle to 60 miles per hour. Rear drum brakes didn't help much in the stopping department, but Honda offered safety-minded consumers optional anti-lock brakes on the premium trim.
Nearly two decades after its introduction, the CR-V has matured in spectacular manner. The refreshed 2015 Honda CR-V, now in its fourth generation, is dimensionally within two inches of its ancestor in overall length and nearly identical in height and wheelbase. That consistency of dimension is impressive in this age of size and segment creep, and it stands as a testament to how 'right' Honda engineers got the model's original packaging. Of course, the CR-V hasn't stood still - nearly everything else about the best-selling compact CUV has improved in leaps and bounds.
But Honda is not the only player in this hotly contested segment today, so the automaker has taken the unusual step of updating its fourth-generation model just a few years after its introduction in an effort to keep it seated on the podium. To learn more about the automaker's improvements, and form our own impressions, we spent a day driving the CR-V in sunny Southern California.

2015 Honda Fit set for Detroit reveal

We've got one more debut confirmed for next month's Detroit Auto Show, as Honda has announced that it will be showing off the 2015 Fit in the Motor City. Honda has released a singular image of the new Fit's rear taillight, above.
From the sole image, we can see that the American-spec Fit will share at least its taillights with the Japanese variant, which we've helpfully included an image of to the right. Now, technically, the blue car to the right is the Fit Hybrid, a car we aren't expecting to see in the US market. But the gallery of images we've included below should give those interested in the car a very good idea of what the new Fit will look like when it hits the auto show stage next month.
As for what will be under hood when it debuts in January, Honda is touting its Earth Dreams Technology engine, which we take to mean some sort of four-cylinder, gas-powered mill. Expect excellent fuel economy from the new car, and according to the Japanese brand, "leading-edge connected car technologies."