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Honda shows us 'The Challenging Spirit of Honda'... in Japanese

Just as Porsche has done with its lengthy Le Mans gear-up, Honda is is laying the table for its Formula One return more than a year before we'll actually see it on track. We've heard what it's 2015 engine will sound like, reminisced with the 1988 McLaren Honda MP4/4 and the 1964 Honda RA271 and spoken to the company's CEO about what F1 involvement could do for its production car engines.
The automaker has now released a video called The Challenging Spirit of Honda that traces the development of its in-house F1 program and the jump from motorcycles to the first RA270 F1 chassis in 1962, to the RA272 chassis that won the 1965 Grand Prix. The only catch: the video is in Japanese. However, you can read about the winning car in English, and the video ends with another sound check of the 2015 power unit. That is a universal language, and you'll find it being spoken below.

Average new-car fuel economy figures continue record pace

Manufacturers are making more efficient cars and trucks; we've known that to be true for some time. Nearly every new car has some sort of trick to eke a few extra miles out of every gallon of fuel. Whether that be turbocharging, active aerodynamics or hybrid technology/electrified powertrains, the fact is that our vehicles are more efficient than ever before.
Thanks to a recent study by TrueCar, we've got fresh quantitative data to support the above statements. For the fourth month in a row, we've seen an improvement in national fleet fuel economy. We Americans are 0.7 miles per gallon more efficient than we were last month, and our cars are 1.6-mpg better than at this time last year. That said, we're still down on 2013's high, which was set back in January at 24.5 mpg.
Not only does this reflect the improved technologies in our vehicles, but it demonstrates a changing mindset among consumers, who are purchasing more efficient vehicles despite the relative stabilization of fuel prices. Every fuel-efficient model sold drives its manufacturers fleet average up.

Former Honda CEOs chide current boss about quality

Taking charge of a major corporation will never be without its challenges, and one of those - as Honda CEO Takanobu Ito is finding out - is filling the big shoes of those that came before. Ito's predecessors are apparently not pleased with what he's doing to the company, and are wasting no time in telling him so.
According to Reuters, two former Honda chiefs have recently visited Ito (pictured above with his predecessor Takeo Fukui) to talk to him about the Japanese automaker's quality issues, which they apparently regard as eroding the company's image. Nobuhiko Kawamoto, who served as CEO from 1990-98, reportedly came to Honda headquarters in Tokyo to deliver "stern words" to Ito last month. Kawamoto's immediate successor, Hiroyuki Yoshino, reportedly met with Ito under similar circumstances earlier this year.
Kawamoto and Yoshino are part of a larger group of former Honda executives who are concerned with the declining quality of the company's products under Ito's leadership. Where Honda once focused more on quality, collaborating more closely with parts suppliers,more recently the company has, in the eyes of those former executives at least, shifted its focus to quantity and to new technologies. That's what, the report alleges, has led to Honda recalling so many of its vehicles in recent years.