2000 Honda Civic Lx Sedan 4-door 1.6l on 2040-cars

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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.

Honda HR-V Prototype looks awfully familiar

Is there anything quite so exciting as seeing a brand-new vehicle for the very first time? Part of the allure of auto shows is the chance to see new ideas, just before they're fully baked and ready for public consumption. "Prototypes" you might say, of production models that are just around the corner. Or, in the case of the Honda HR-V, already down the block a ways.
Here in Paris, Honda has unveiled its HR-V Prototype, a nearly production-ready version of a "new SUV for Europe." Before we take umbrage with that SUV designation - as far as we can tell the Fit-based crossover isn't much of a mudder - we should address the fact that at this year's New York Auto Show in April, Honda handed over just a few images and specs of the actually production-read HR-V for the US. Presumably this is a "prototype" for Europe, where the NYC car is US-specific, but we're still scratching our heads a bit.
No matter! Here in France, Honda tells us that the utile little hatch will be available powered by both a 1.5-liter gasoline engine (the one American customers will see), and a 1.6-liter diesel unit, both wearing the company's Earth Dreams Technology label and presumably running cleaner and more frugally than ever. In Europe, a standard six-speed manual will come with both mills, while the 1.5-liter will offer the option of a continuously variable transmission.

Weekly Recap: Car-pedestrian crashes remained elevated in 2014

The death of American Horror Story: Freak Show star Ben Woolf served as a reminder this week that car crashes involving pedestrians remain a problem, and a new study issued on Thursday reinforced that the situation isn't really getting better. The Governors Highway Safety Association found a slight decline, 2.8 percent, in the number of pedestrian deaths in the first six months of 2014. Fatalities dropped from 2,141 to 2,125 compared with the same period in 2013, though the association says it's a statistical wash when factoring in undercounting. Deaths are still 15-percent higher than in 2009. "The number of deaths remains relatively high and is cause for concern," wrote Allan Williams, who compiled the report and is the former chief scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. This is the first look at data from last year, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will issue its full-year results later. The GHSA found some progress on the roadways, as 24 states and the District of Columbia reported drops in pedestrian deaths. In some states, the problem isn't even a problem at all: Nebraska and Wyoming reported one fatality apiece, though large population centers in urban areas are where most accidents occur. "This is a clearly a good news, bad news scenario," Jonathan Adkins, GHSA executive director, said in a statement. "While we're encouraged that pedestrian fatalities haven't increased over the past two years, progress has been slow." Other News & Notes Cadillac previews CT6 during Oscars Cadillac previewed its upcoming flagship sedan, the CT6, in commercials that aired Sunday during the Oscars. As expected, the creased sedan carries on Cadillac's recent design language, and the car in the commercial looks like a larger version of the CTS and ATS sedans. The CT6 will be revealed this spring at the New York Auto Show and launch late this year. It will be assembled at General Motors' Detroit-Hamtramck factory on a rear-wheel-drive chassis, and the CT6 is the first car to use Cadillac's revised alpha-numeric naming scheme. The commercials also kicked off Cadillac's "Dare Greatly" campaign, which is the first with its new advertising agency, Publicis Worldwide. Honda unexpectedly changes CEOs Honda unexpectedly announced this week that it will change CEOs. Current chief Takanobu Ito will step down in June and be replaced by company veteran Takahiro Hachigo.