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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Honda shifts CR-V production to Canada as UK focuses on Civic

Honda is reshuffling its global production in a somewhat bizarre way. Under the newly announced plans, the European version of the CR-V will no longer be assembled locally, but the region will become the hub for some Civic production. As part of this new strategy, Honda's Canadian manufacturing operations will become responsible for building the next-gen version of the European CR-V. Once assembled, the popular crossovers will then be exported back across the Atlantic. The investment to make these changes comes from 875 million Canadian dollars ($690 million) already allocated by Honda for expansion there. The current European CR-V (pictured above) is made in Swindon, England, and with that model moving to Canada, the site fulfills the second part of this production shuffle. Honda will invest 200 million pounds ($300 million) there to make the location a global production hub specifically for the next-gen Civic five-door hatchback. The examples made in the UK will be not just for Europe but also will be "exported to key global markets," according to the automaker. Honda now confirms one of those markets to be the US, and a recent rumor suggests the company sending over around 40,000 of them a year. Related Video: HONDA OF CANADA MFG. EXPANDS EXPORT DESTINATIONS WITH EUROPEAN SPEC CR-V ALLISTON, ON (March 30, 2015) – Honda of Canada Mfg. (HCM), a division of Honda Canada Inc., announced today that it will produce the next generation CR-V model for the European market. This will be the first time that HCM will export vehicles to Europe. Today's news follows Honda's recent announcement that it will invest $857M in its Canadian facilities, as it prepares for production as the global lead plant for the next generation Honda Civic, Canada's best-selling passenger car for the past 17 years. "Honda is thrilled to once again have good news for automotive manufacturing in Canada by broadening our production portfolio to include exports to the European market," said Jerry Chenkin, President and CEO of Honda Canada Inc. "This expansion decision was made possible due to our deep, mature, and rich talent pool with nearly 30 years of automotive manufacturing experience. We are so proud that our Canadian associates have the reputation of producing high quality vehicles that will meet the needs of the discerning European customer." The announcement further solidifies Honda's already deep roots and commitment to Canada.

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.