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Honda Builds The Crossover Of Bikes
Here in the land of Harleys and highways that stretch to infinity, Americans don't care much for sensible motorcycles. Unlike the majority of global bike buyers, North Americans tend to choose escape over utility, performance over practicality - that's simply how it's been done in the land of the free, at least until a funny thing happened on the way to the global recession.
As bank balances thinned and fuel prices crept skyward, sales of puffed up sportbikes and cartoonishly endowed cruisers plummeted. Americans rediscovered that motorcycles could be used for tasks like workaday commutes and trips to the grocery store, not just for riding into a Marlboro Man-approved sunset, fringe in tow. As consumers matured, manufacturers slowly responded with bikes better suited for purposeful priorities.

Honda MC-? prototype

Honda is less an automaker, it has been said, and more of a motor company that builds vehicles into which to put its engines. That sort of perspective goes a long way towards explaining the mind-boggling diversity of the company's product lineup. The Japanese industrial giant makes lawnmowers, marine engines, robots... even jet aircraft. It's also one of only a handful of companies that makes both cars and motorbikes. We recently had the chance to sample something that falls in between.
It's called MC-β - shorthand for Micro Commuter Beta, which already tells you it's Honda's second stab at the formula. The first Micro Commuter prototype was announced a year prior and, though marginally larger, struck us as a more complete product than its successor. But it'll likely still be a while before the formula is perfected and put into production, and even then it isn't likely to find its way any time soon to Honda's American showrooms - whether those showrooms are selling cars, bikes or ride-on mowers.
Driving Notes

Honda Concept B Hybrid production version coming to China in 2016

At the Beijing Motor Show this weekend, Honda took the wraps off of the Concept B Hybrid, a "new-value concept" that will apparently do its level best to get the Japanese automaker back into the entry-level gas-electric game. Powertrain details for the five-door concept hatch are noticeably absent, so we are assuming that what Honda wants with this concept is for us to focus on the looks. Honda says the car's exterior design is "advanced and cool-looking." We like the shape, but think a few changes will do wonders for the production model.
If the busy front end gets turned down a bit in production (it's especially glaring from the front), we can see this becoming a darn good replacement for the Insight at the lower end of the hybrid price spectrum. Sadly, for now, Honda is saying that the mass-production model that uses the Concept B as a foundation will be available "exclusively" on the Chinese market in two years.
Speaking at the Beijing show, Honda president and CEO Takanobu Ito continued to look for ways to green his company's line-up, and said Honda, "will strive to become number one in complying with Chinese CAFE regulations, which are the toughest in the world, and offer a new lifestyle for Chinese customers." Come 2016, that new lifestyle could look like the car you see in the gallery above. Think it's a good one?