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Junkyard Gem: 2000 Honda Passport 4WD

The suits at American Honda Motor Company must have spent the bulk of the 1990s tearing out their hair in frustration as their rivals raked in big money from the sales of ever-more-profitable SUVs, even as American car shoppers lost interest in sedans and hatchbacks. Oh, sure, the Civic-based CR-V appeared here for the 1997 model year and sold well enough, but the lack of a larger SUV pained Honda more with each passing year. With the Acura MDX and Honda Pilot not ready for showrooms until the 2001 and 2002 model years, respectively, some stopgap had to be found. Isuzu stepped up and made a deal with Honda: the Rodeo would get Honda badges and become the Passport, while the Trooper would show up in Acura showrooms with SLX badges (for the 1994 and 1995 model years, respectively). Here's one of those Passports, found in a Denver-area self-service yard. Things got even weirder in the Isuzu/Honda world around the turn of the century, with the Honda Odyssey getting Isuzu badges and being sold as the Oasis. Fast-forward to 2009, and the only Isuzu-badged vehicles available new here were rebadged Chevrolets: the I-Series pickup (Chevy Colorado) and the Ascender (Chevy Trailblazer). The Passport name has some interesting American Honda history, stretching back to the first Honda vehicle sold here (and the biggest-selling motor vehicle in human history): the Super Cub. American Honda Motor Company couldn't use the Super Cub name on our shores, because Piper Aircraft had been selling a small plane called the Super Cub since 1949, so the motorcycle was called the Honda 50 over here. Eventually, this bike got a 70cc engine and became the Honda C70 Passport, sales of which continued through the middle 1980s. That means the Passports sitting in your local Honda dealership right now got their name from a one-cylinder motorcycle. General Motors has a Passport connection as well; when GM created the Geo brand to sell rebadged Isuzus, Suzukis, and Toyotas in the United States, it created a marque called Passport to sell the Daewoo LeMans as the Optima in Canada (all the other vehicles sold by Passport dealers were Isuzus). So, Honda's need to offer SUVs in its American dealerships led to an arrangement with GM-connected Isuzu to sell these trucks with a model name bearing links to both companies. So much history in the junkyard! Just as Geo-badged Toyota Corollas (mostly) got Delco radios, so did the Passport get Honda radios.

2014 Honda Odyssey set to clean up in NY with world's first in-car vacuum

Much of the minivan segment's volume has been sucked up by the industry's ever-increasing appetite for crossovers, but a few major players are hanging in there, eager to serve as beasts of burden for America's families. Chief among those players is Honda, which is showing its revamped 2014 Odyssey at this week's New York Auto Show with a potential game-changing feature - an in-car vacuum.
Co-developed with Shop-Vac, the HondaVAC system will come standard on the range-topping Touring Elite model. The system includes a replaceable filter and canister bag, along with a range of attachments located in the cargo hold. Honda says this first-ever feature includes a hose that is long enough to clean the entire interior. Better still, the vacuum will run for up to eight minutes after the vehicle is turned off, so you can get every last Cheerio out of the seat cushions, and it never needs plugging in or recharging, as it runs off of the vehicle's electrical system.
In other news, the 2014 Odyssey gets a new aluminum hood and fenders to pair with its revamped grille and lower fascia. Headlamps get a more sinister look thanks to darker surrounds, and there are new LED taillamps out back, as well as revamped side mirrors on the doors. Underneath the skin, Honda says the 2014 Odyssey has received structural changes to help it ace the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety's new small-overlap frontal crash test, and it's also added active safety features like lane departure warning and forward collision warning to the optional features list.

Lawsuit reveals gruesome details of Takata airbag victim's death

The accident was minor. The aftermath was horrific. Carlos Solis was waiting to turn left into a Houston-area apartment complex on January 28 when oncoming traffic struck the front-left corner of his 2002 Honda Accord, pictured above. He was stopped, according to a police report of the accident. The other car traveled at under 30 miles per hour. He should have walked away from the fender-bender. Instead, the 35-year-old married man was killed when a defective airbag exploded and sent a large piece of metal shrapnel into his neck, his estate's lawyers allege in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Harris County, Texas. He bled to death while his younger brother and an 11-year-old cousin tried to save him. Solis is one of at least six motorists killed by defective airbags made by Takata, a global automotive supplier. He may also be a posthumous poster child for federal legislation introduced earlier this week that would ensure car owners receive more timely information about safety recalls. Currently, federal law does not require car dealers to tell prospective buyers about open recalls on used cars or whether defects have been repaired. Legislation introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wouldn't require that directly of dealerships, but it would mandate that car owners be notified of recalls when they apply for registration and at the time of registration renewal. "Important recall notices can get bogged down with legalese, and busy consumers can miss a life-saving update," Blumenthal said. "This legislation provides a common-sense avenue to ensure every driver is reminded and encouraged to make the necessary repairs." Such a law may have prevented Solis' death. Although his '02 Accord had been recalled in late 2011, his wife and lawyers say he had no knowledge of the recall when he bought the car used from All Star Auto Sales in 2014, nor did he know of the dangerous flaw when he set out to visit his parents on Jan. 18. Only one month earlier, Congress held hearings on Takata and Honda's long-standing inaction related to the defective airbags. Documents showed both companies were aware of problems with the airbags as early as 2004, and a report in The New York Times detailed secret airbag tests, the results of which alarmed Takata engineers. Yet the company withheld the information from federal safety administrators.