Apart from donating 1,000 portable generators, Honda delivers something really useful: Precise information about road conditions in the disaster areas. Together with Google Maps and Honda’s traffic data suppliers Internavi and Smartloop, Honda provides real time road conditions for the disaster stricken areas. (Read More…)
Some overly excited blogs may report that Honda is exiting the growth market India. Careful. Indeed, Reuters reports that “Hero Investments has agreed to buy Honda Motors Ltd’s 26 percent stake in Hero Honda Motors for around $851 million in a deal that will see the Japanese automaker exit its joint venture in India after more than 26 years.” So are they outta there? (Read More…)
What does it take to win the Heroic Fix trophy at the heroism-heavy Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons? Frantic engine swaps are a dime a dozen in LeMons racing, but what happens when the replacement engine goes bad? (Read More…)
What ever happened to the fabled Japanese job security? Instead of kaizen (continuous improvement), there is continuous change. A week ago, The Nikkei [sub] predicted that Toyota will cut its sprawling board from 27 members down to a more manageable 10-15. The announcement will most likely come at a press conference on March 9. The announcement hasn’t even been made, and Honda is already following suit by reducing its number if suits. (Read More…)
If you only get excited by the sausage of a car and not by the sausage making of a car factory, hop on to the next article, because this will utterly bore you. Everybody gone? Alright, talking to myself again. We’ve always said, not really in jest, that two industries profit the most from just in time manufacturing: The real estate industry and the trucking industry. Honda wants some of that money. (Read More…)
Every time I see an early NSX— which, sadly, isn’t often— it reinforces my belief that the early 1990s were a golden age for the automobile. You had decent electronic engine controls instead of carburetors (and primitive might-as-well-be-carburetors 80s EFI), model bloat hadn’t gotten totally out of hand, and the SUV revolution hadn’t yet caused cup holders and other McMansion-esque gear to metastasize from every interior surface of every vehicle. Sure, we’re now living in the Golden Age Of Engines— there’s no arguing with the horsepower and efficiency numbers we’re seeing from internal combustion these days— but I’ll take the early 1990s. And the NSX. (Read More…)
We had intimated it a few days ago, now it’s official: Toyota’s Prius is no longer primus (or make that ichi ban) in Japan. The hybrid that had been Japan’s best selling car for 20 months in a row had to relinquish the throne to Honda’s Fit. (Read More…)
Honda Motor Co. Ltd. has to write off 15 billion yen ($181 million) “resulting from recently discovered improper transactions at a trading business subsidiary in Tokyo,” reports The Nikkei [sub]. It was all about dead fish. (Read More…)
Having earned its place in the American market by launching focused products at its biggest segments, Honda’s 2010 sales performance proved the danger of chasing niches. In his remarks at the North American International Auto Show, Honda’s John Mendel insisted that
sales of the sporty and stylish CR-Z are also exceeding our expectations with sales of more than 5-thousand vehicles in the first four months. It’s great to see our customers embrace this vehicle … and our effort to push hybrid technology in a sporty direction
but besides proving that expectations for the CR-Z were extremely low, it’s hard to see what he meant. Expectations for the 2012 Honda Civic, on the other hand, are considerably higher.
It looks like Gawker can find solace in the reassuring fact that they are not the only ones who ended up with a purloined database, containing the privates private details of all their customers. Intimate customer data of Honda has also been robbed and plundered. See, it happens to the best of them. (Read More…)
If there ever will be a sequel to jet-gate (original brought to you by Brian Ross, yeah, that Brian Ross), Honda has a get-out-of-jail-free card. They just call it a proficiency flight.
Honda sees a great future in the business jet market. Their wholly owned U.S. subsidiary Honda Aircraft Co. has successfully completed the first flight of the production version of its HondaJet business aircraft, reports The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)
Japanese makers are jumping on the Made for China (or possibly Made for Export from China) trend that was started by GM with the Bao Jun.
Both Nissan and Honda are showing (allegedly) Made for China brands at the Guangzhou Auto Show. (Read More…)
EVs are, nice wouldn’t there be (putting range and price aside for a moment) one niggling problem: The power has to come from somewhere. And currently, the exhaust that will no longer be produced by the car, will come out of the smokestacks of a mostly coal fired power plant. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could power our cars from sunshine alone? Definitely renewable. And free. Honda is trying to do just that. (Read More…)
Some folks will tell you that you need a big ol’ truck to haul a grimy cast-iron V8, but those folks are wrong! My beater ’92 Civic, which stood up well when compared to the Audi R8, not only sports a trailer hitch (no doubt suitable for hauling popcorn carts weighing up to several hundred pounds) but the cargo-area capacity to take a disassembled Chrysler LA engine. (Read More…)
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