#honda

Consider the Honda CB1000R, everything you need and nothing you don’t. Beyond the naked bike school of thought, the CB1000R is unbridled joy, without the race replica look of a sport bike, nor the flash of a cruiser.

Honda has announced that CEO Takahiro Hachigo will be succeeded by the automaker’s head of research and development, Toshihiro Mibe. The company’s board held a meeting on Friday to finalize the decision, noting in a release that Mibe would officially be taking over leadership responsibilities on April 1st. A resolution of the general shareholder meeting is scheduled for June 2021, at which point Hachigo is assumed to be retiring from the business.

Mibe joined Honda’s engineering team in 1987 and had worked his way up to head of R&D in 2019. Since 2020, he’s also been working as the brand’s senior managing director. He’s to be tasked with taking the manufacturer into “the next era” — which we’re guessing entails strengthening its commitment to electric vehicles. Though the manufacturer also stated that “a new value system is spreading all around the world” adding that this change in management would help reflect that as it strives to solve social issues.

A 2022 Honda Civic Hatchback test mule was spotted in Columbus, Ohio, sporting some of the most unnecessarily aggressive automotive camouflage in recent memory. But the thick black cladding wasn’t enough to mask what the 11th Gen Civic Forum immediately identified as a rear spoiler.

Historically, most of Honda’s design previews have been so close to the finished product that most of us don’t even bother referencing them as concept vehicles anymore. They’re akin to a final draft with a few embellishments that are likely to be toned down before anything hits the assembly line. But the 11th-generation Civic Sedan Concept came out looking like a Honda’s attempt at building the Volkswagen Jetta, leaving the manufacturer with a shortage of radical design cues to scale back.

The 2021 Honda Ridgeline arrives at dealerships today, with all-new sheetmetal upfront, a 280-horsepower, 3.5-liter V6, 9-speed automatic, and torque-vectoring all-wheel drive standard across the lineup. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price starts at $36,490, with a destination charge of $1,175.

In our last edition of Buy/Drive/Burn, we took a look at three subcompact American CUVs competing at the $25,000 price point. Most of you seemed to agree they were all terrible, but the Trax edged out the Buy in the comments.

Let’s see how you feel about the Japanese competition.

Two Honda battery-electric crossovers will be built by General Motors in the next four years. A Honda will be built at a GM plant in Mexico, and an Acura alongside the Cadillac Lyriq in Tennessee.

On Tuesday, Honda announced a bevy of recalls encompassing more than 1.4 million automobiles sold in the United States. Split between several campaigns, the recalls encompass everything from dissolving driveshafts to bum window controls that could potentially result in a vehicle fire.

According to reports issued via the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the first and most-pressing issue involves the 2002-2006 Honda CR-V. Crossovers introduced to moisture could see their power window switches failing. If sufficient moisture is applied to the wires, Honda stated that there is some risk of a “thermal event.” As of November, the automaker said it was aware of 87 such instances and 23 reported events of fire.

The 2022 Honda Civic hatchback, the sportier sibling to the sedan revealed earlier, has been previewed by spy shots on the Civic XI forum as reported by CNET’s Roadshow. Added to the sedan, the hatchback will join the also likely-planned Si and Type R as the four permutations offered in the U.S.

While every other developed nation has been struggling unsuccessfully to catch up, Japan remains ground zero for adorable robots and Honda is continuing the trend with its new traffic-safety gizmo. Intended to advise young children on how to proceed through intersections, the product is really more like blind-spot-monitoring for kids than a full-on robotic entity. But it seems a useful useful addition to the pedestrian-heavy country where youngsters are substantially more likely to be struck by automobiles than here in North America.

Titled “Ropot” by its creators, the device rides on a backpack or shoulder strap and uses its GPS capabilities to remind kids to stop and look at intersections. It also allows parents to track the whereabouts of their offspring. However, since Ropot is targeted for children who are just starting to venture places on their own, a little parental spying may be warranted. All the adults have to do is make sure they take that first trip to school together so Honda’s wide-eyed helper can learn the route.

I’ve been very fortunate to attend eight driving schools. This one was definitely the slowest, but the fun factor was unquestionably among the highest. I was driving a four-passenger Honda Talon 1000X-4; a fantastic machine for the miles of trails present in the northwestern region of Maui. Yes, that Maui.

Featuring stadium seating for the rear passengers, Honda Talons are quite accommodating. Utilizing a 116.4-inch wheelbase (think Dodge Challenger), they are powered by a 999 cc parallel twin-cylinder engine. The acceleration was very good, even with the throttle rarely pinned to the floor. When was the last time you said that about a rental car – or off-roader?

As Toyota approached the launch of the all-new, 2018 Toyota Camry in mid-2017, the automaker telegraphed its intentions very plainly.

“I think you’re going to see the entire sedan market pick up,” then vice-president Jack Hollis said. “We want the new Camry to rehabilitate the segment,” Toyota’s Moritaka Yoshida said at the time.

Toyota wasn’t alone.

“I don’t expect to sell fewer Accords in 2018 with this great new product,” Honda’s sales vice-president, Ray Mikiciuk, said later on in 2017. Accord sales fell 10 percent in 2018 before sliding 8 percent in 2019.

One year later, Nissan’s Dennis Le Vot worked up to the launch of the 2019 Altima by suggesting that when it comes to passenger car market share: “We think 30 percent is the bottom.” Passenger car market share fell below 30 percent in 2019, the new Altima’s first full year.

Now we’re months away from the arrival of the 11th-generation Honda Civic. You know the drill: major automaker launches major car nameplate, major automaker suggests car market will stop the free-fall, major automaker hypes possibility of car market healing.

We’re skeptical.

We told you last week that the eleventh-generation of the Honda Civic would be shown on streaming service Twitch, and lo and it behold, it was on Tuesday night.

At least in prototype form.

I’ve long resisted being the kind of person who could have The Simpsons “old man yells at cloud” jpeg thrown at me. Figuratively speaking, of course, since you can’t really throw a jpeg.

My reaction to the announcement that the unveiling of the 2022 Honda Civic will take place on Twitch is dangerously close to putting me at risk of having that meme used against me. If I had a lawn, and you were on it, I might start to form the words “get off.”

When Honda sent out the press release detailing the updates for the 2021 model-year Accord and Accord Hybrid, I shed a tear (figuratively) for the loss of the manual-transmission option in the gas models, and wondered why they were bothering with the hybrid. There didn’t seem to be much changed.

That may be true, but perhaps it’s because there wasn’t much to fix to begin with?

Honda Motor Co. will be accompanying Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in pooling its emissions with electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla in an attempt to adhere to CO2 limits mandated by the European Union. For 2020, the average emissions of all vehicles sold within the region must not exceed 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer. Companies failing to comply will be forced to pay the government sizable fines as it readies even higher targets for next year.

Over half of automakers planning to move product inside Europe next year are already assumed to fail however, resulting in a series of rushed hybrid/EV products, the obliteration of the diesel-powered passenger vehicles, and companies desperate to team up with the manufacturers that came in under the regulatory limits.