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2014 Honda Grom motorcycle is a 125cc-shot of awesome [w/video]

My very first turn at the handlebars of a motorcycle came courtesy of an MSF Honda CB125. Despite the fact that it wore a very stern sticker on the tank warning all who rode that it was for instructional purposes only and not for legal sale, I wanted nothing more than to ride it past the cones of my license test and straight home. There was just something about the lightweight, low-power machine that just felt right. Now Honda is giving American buyers the chance to take home something similar. Meet the Grom. Yes, it's basically a sexed-up scooter, but that's fine by me.
There's a fuel-injected 125cc single pushing the fat-tired bike around, and a four-speed gearbox handles shifting duty.The smallish 12-inch wheels give the Grom a bit of a goofball appearance, but the handsome bodywork and gold forks help offset the look. Something tells me this joker is more fun than should be legal. Check out a fun video of the bike in action by scrolling down, and while you're there, you'll find a full press release on all of the new Honda powersports models, including the Grom. You can also head over to the Honda consumer site for more information. The bike will land in showrooms this August with an MSRP of $2,999.

NHTSA urges owners of recalled Takata airbag vehicles to take immediate action

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Department of Transportation are taking the unusual step of issuing a followup press release urging owners of certain recalled vehicles "to act immediately" to fix their cars and trucks. The problem in question concerns the repair campaigns for rupturing Takata airbag inflators issued in June and covers a long list of models from Toyota, Lexus, Honda, Acura, Mazda, BMW, Nissan, Infiniti, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Oldsmobile and Pontiac.
While NHSTA doesn't specifically say why the recall is vital in the new release, Toyota's own explanation in its newly announced renotification campaign earlier today sheds some new light on the topic. According to the Japanese automaker, in testing, Takata found a possible link between the rupturing airbag inflators and high humidity. NHTSA is advocating that all owners pursue repairs immediately if they haven't already done so already. This is especially crucial for those drivers especially in Florida, Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, American Samoa, Virgin Islands and Hawaii because of the humid conditions there.
We don't need to tell you how dangerous an inadvertent airbag deployment could be - even in a stationary vehicle - but adding to the Takata issue is fears that the deployment could lead to shrapnel being sprayed into the cabin.

2015 Acura NSX burns to the ground at the 'Ring [w/video]

Assuming all goes to plan, automakers test their vehicles to the breaking point in the months and years leading up to that vehicle's actual release into the public. Which is good, because it's much better for a car to break in glorious fashion in the hands of the company that produces it than in the driveway of an owner who just spent their hard-earned cash to get it. Such was the case with this production-guise Acura NSX prototype that we saw running around the Nurburgring just the other day. We can't be 100-percent certain, but the burned-out carcass is wearing the same number plate as the car that was spotted earlier, so it's likely the very same NSX. We have no idea what was the cause of the blaze that turned this Acura into the car-b-q you see pictured above, but our spy shooters on the ground in Germany say it was not involved in any collision, having caught on fire all on its own with engineers behind the wheel. The good news is that nobody was hurt, though the car is quite clearly a complete loss. We're sure there's another ready to to test in the burned car's place... just as soon as the engineers at Honda figure out exactly what went wrong. Have a look at the smoldering aftermath up above, and feel free to scroll down below to see a video of the car in much better circumstances.