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Lexus gets top brand marks from Consumer Reports; Ford, Jeep hit hard

Consumer Reports has released its 2014 Car Brand Report Cards, with Lexus again reigning at the top and doing so with the same industry-topping score of 79 that it registered in last year's Report Cards. This year, the institute credited its lineup for being "usually quiet, comfortable, and fuel-efficient," noting it's the only brand on the list "to achieve an excellent average overall reliability score." The Car Brand Report Cars list is meant to rank the best all-around vehicles based on CR testing and reliability results tallied by subscribers it surveyed. Each brand included must have sufficient test and reliability data for at least three models, a standard which left out 11 marques including Fiat, Jaguar, Land Rover and Porsche.
This 2014 Brand Report Cars edition is the first of a new format in which sub-brands have been broken out from their parent brands, with Acura using this year to move up the leaderboard into second place with a score of 75 for its "reliable, well-finished and somewhat sporty models." The top three was rounded out by Audi, climbing from eighth to third by scoring a 74 for "well-crafted interiors, nice handling and good gas mileage." Audi scored highest in the road-test portion, its improved reliability aiding its rise. The top nine was completed by Subaru, Toyota, Mazda, Honda, Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz.
Ford and Jeep weighed in at the other end of the rankings, Jeep taking the lowest overall score in the road tests and hampered by "a mix of spotty reliability." Ford was sunk by reliability issues with its MyFord Touch infotainment system which consumers found troublesome enough to negate its cars earning "solid test scores" for being "very nice to drive." Perhaps the rumored switch from Microsoft to Blackberry's QNX for the next generation SYNC will help them out. Cadillac's score also took a hit for infotainment reasons after it was the leading US brand last year, the CUE system in the XTS dragging Cadillac to the bottom of all General Motors brands.

Honda celebrates 30th anniversary of the NSX with a look back at how it began

In 1989, the baseball-loving Japanese dipped their bats in pine tar and came to the U.S. to take gigundous swings. That single year launched five legends: Lexus LS400, Infiniti Q45, Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo, Mazda MX-5 Miata, and Acura NS-X concept. The Chicago Auto Show (!) hosted the global debuts of the Mazda and the Acura. While Mazda celebrates the bygones with the 30th Anniversary Miata, Acura's reminiscing with a look at how the NSX — a car Motor Trend described in 1990 as, "[The] best sports car the world has ever produced. Any time. Any place. Any price ..." — came to be. The development yearbook opened in 1984, a year after Honda returned to Formula One as an engine supplier for the Spirit team, and for the second Williams chassis in the last race of the season. For the first time in the automaker's history, Honda wanted to build a production car with the engine behind the cabin, one that would demonstrate Honda's engineering prowess and "deeply rooted racing spirit." The sports car would also serve as a halo for the not-yet-launched Acura brand. The engineering team built the first test vehicle in February 1984 on the bones of a first-generation Honda Jazz. After four years of formal development, Honda parked the NS-X Concept in a conference room at Chicago's Drake Hotel in February 1989. This is where the media would meet the red wonder before the public show-stand debut. The F-16 Fighting Falcon-inspired coupe was built on the world's first all-aluminum monocoque, and its SOHC V6 ran with titanium connecting rods. Before the press conference, then-Honda president Tadashi Kume got in the NS-X, started the engine, and revved to the 8,000-rpm redline — a noise felt by everyone in the adjacent conference room attending a Ford press conference. Honda's PR man at the time yelled, "Mr. Kume, stop it! They're gonna hear this!" When Kume got out, he asked Honda engineers present why they didn't put their new VTEC technology in the NS-X. (What's Japanese for, "Why didn't the VTEC kick in, yo?!") They told him VTEC had been created for four-cylinder engines. Kume told them to work on a V6 application. More suggestions came from journos who drove the early prototypes at Honda's Tochigi R&D Center, who said the NS-X "could use more power." The development team had grabbed the SOHC V6 from the Acura Legend for the NS-X concept, and it put out 160 horsepower in the luxury sedan.

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Acura SLX

By the second half of the 1990s, the tremendous sales success of the Ford Explorer (introduced as a 1991 model) and Jeep Grand Cherokee (introduced as a 1993 model) had made it clear clear that the future of the American road would be trucks. Any automotive manufacturer not selling a full line of SUV-ish machinery here would be irrelevant soon after the dawn of the new century, and the car-and-bike-centric American Honda Motor Company was therefore in big trouble. The Civic could be used as the basis for a small crossover SUV (which debuted here as the 1997 Honda CR-V), but Honda needed to buy time to design and produce the platform that would underpin the 2001 Acura MDX and 2003 Honda Pilot. That time was purchased via a deal to sell rebadged Isuzu trucks as Hondas and Acuras. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those Honda-ized Isuzus, found in a Colorado boneyard. Honda began selling the Isuzu Rodeo as the Passport (recycling the name they'd used on the U.S.-market Super Cub motorcycle) for the 1994 model year, and Acura dealers started moving SLX-badged Isuzu Troopers in the 1997 model year. Just to make things interesting in the Isuzu-Honda world, North American Isuzu dealers sold Honda Odysseys with Isuzu Oasis badges at the same time. Isuzu had gone all-truck for the American market after the last Styluses (and closely related Geo Storms) were sold here as 1993 models. Sadly, Isuzu's final (non-commercial) new vehicles sold here were rebadged Chevy Trailblazers and Colorados, more than 30 years after Chevrolet began selling Isuzu Faster pickups here with LUV badges. Honda never did build any body-on-frame trucks, but that proved unnecessary in order to make some money during the CUV/SUV era. The SLX never sold particularly well, but it gave Acura dealers a luxury truck to park next to the Integras, TLs, RLs, CLs and NSXs in their showrooms. After 1999, the SLX was gone, leaving just the 2000 model year as a blank spot for Acura-badged SUVs. This truck held together like a real Honda product, getting fairly close to the 300,000-mile mark (I've found junkyard Accords with better than a half-million miles on their odometers, plus one apiece Civic and CR-V that got past 400,000 miles during their lives). The original owner's manuals were still in the glovebox when I found this truck. At the end, it appears that it was towed away for being parked illegally. Maybe the engine or transmission failed and its final owner just walked away.