The Honda City was displayed at the 2008 Sydney Motor Show as a SEMA-like concept, not surprisingly called the Honda City Concept. This tricked out Honda City features wing mirrors that use cameras instead of a mirror, LED headlamps and tail lamps as well as a bodykit and alloy wheels. Photos courtesy of Jeff Choo. More after the jump. Click here to read the rest of Modified Australia Honda City “Concept”
Honda has a few K-cars in the Japanese market like the Honda ZEST (shown above) and the Honda Life, but they’ve been reserved for the Japanese market so far. I actually drove the Honda ZEST with the turbocharged 660cc i-DSI engine last year during the visit to Honda’s R&D facility in Tochigi and it really felt quite zippy thanks to the turbocharger’s torque and the 4-speed automatic.
India’s Honda Siel has revealed that Honda is working on developing a new car smaller than the Honda Jazz for emerging markets - that’s pretty much markets such as the Indian and ASEAN market, so we may even see it in Malaysia as a contender to the likes of the Hyundai i10 and the Kia Picanto.
The powerplant is currently a question mark, but Honda Siel says the engine could possibly be under 1.0 liters in displacement. Honda has two 660cc engines - a normally aspirated version which produces 52hp at 6,700rpm and 61Nm of torque at 3,800rpm, and a turbo-ed version with a top-mounted intercooler making 64hp at 6,000rpm and 93Nm of torque at 4,000rpm.
Given that Honda’s Indian unit is the one revealing this juicy bit of info, India could most likely be the production base for the new car.
The new Honda Odyssey has been unveiled in Japan, revealing styling that is very much like the recently launched Honda FCX Clarity, as with pretty much all new Honda cars and concepts these days.
The standard Honda Odyssey is powered by a 2.4 liter DOHC i-VTEC engine producing 173 PS at 6,000rpm and 222Nm of torque at 4,300rpm. It rides on double-wishbones both at the front and rear. The FWD models are mated to a new CVT transmission (with torque converter) with ratios ranging from 2.470-0.450 while the AWD models are paired to a 5-speed auto with dual overdrives (ratios ranging from 2.651-0.566).
A high-spec Honda Odyssey Absolute uses the 5-speed automatic for both FWD and AWD variants and is powered by a tuned up version of the K24A engine. Thanks to higher revving and a higher compression ratio of 11:0:1 (instead of 10.0:1), it produces 206 PS at 7,000rpm and 232Nm of torque at 4,300rpm for the FWD version, and 204 PS and 230Nm of torque for the 4WD model.
The wheelbase remains the same as the outgoing model at 2,830mm but length has increased from 4,770mm to 4,800mm. While the width remains the same at 1,800mm, it seems that the new Odyssey in FWD form is lower at 1,545mm compared to the outgoing Malaysian spec FWD model’s 1,550mm height.
On the interior, the dash carries over a similiar “spaceship”-like design of the outgoing model, but updated to look different. The instrument panel features a display in the middle of the speedometer to function as a trip computer and display other key vehicle information such as a real time fuel consumption meter.
A redesign of the second row seats provides an additional 40mm of legroom and 20mm of knee space for the third row. The left and right seats of the second row is now moved 25mm forwards the center of the vehicle to create a V-shaped layout, which Honda says provides for a clearer forward view. The second row splits 3 ways - all 3 seats can be folded down individually.
The tailgate has been made thinner so that there is a slight increase of storage volume in the rear of the Odyssey. Over at the front, the A-pillars of the Odyssey have been modified to be 30% thinner for better visibility.
There is a new ECO button for the CVT models which controls both the CVT transmission shift pattern as well as the air conditioning system to reduce engine load, thus reducing fuel consumption in the process. Honda claims a fuel economy of 13.2km/L in the Japan 10-15 mode for the FWD CVT models.
Look for more images of the new Odyssey after the jump. Click here to read the rest of New 2009 Honda Odyssey unveiled in Japan!
The Honda City is now in its third generation, and has been launched in countries such as Singapore, Thailand and India. In line with the global economic outlook as well as global fuel prices, manufacturers have been downsizing their cars and the new City makes a perfect compact sedan in the Honda line-up slotted in under the Civic for world markets. It is considered to be a world car now, as it has also been recently revealed that the City will also be sold in Europe. Look after the jump for an in-depth look at the new City. Click here to read the rest of 2009 Honda City: in-depth details and specifications!
It’s Datuk Takeo Fukui from today onwards, as the CEO of Honda Motor Co Ltd Japan will receive the Darjah Mulia Seri Melaka (DMSM) which carries the title Datuk today at the 70th birthday of Malacca’s Yang di-Pertua Negri Tun Mohd Khalil Yaakob.
He joined Honda in 1969 and has been working his way up the ladder ever since, up to the CEO position he is currently holding since 2003. He started off as an engineer and worked on the CVCC project, and later became chief engineer of the Honda R&D Company and later president.
The Datukship is probably because of Honda’s contribution to the economy of Malacca via it’s assembly plant in Pegoh Alor Gajah, which also exports parts such as CV joints and bumpers.
The Honda Insight is a “dedicated hybrid vehicle” in Honda terms, which means it is a model that only comes with a hybrid powertrain, unlike the Honda Civic Hybrid which also has non-hybrid variants.
The 5-door, 5-seater car has its battery and control unit located under the cargo space. This is the latest version of Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist system. A production version will be announced later and will go on sale in spring 2009 in Japan, Europe and North America. Annual sales are projected to reach 200,000 units.
We have to note that none of the promises that Honda made when they first talked about this new Insight sometime ago have been fulfilled with this concept. The Insight will apparently be cheap enough for a majority of people to consider, instead of current hybrids which are typically much more expensive than the regular versions.
The Civic Hybrid currently costs RM162,800 here in Malaysia, much more than the Civic 2.0 at RM128,800, and that is a big price difference. We will have to wait for the production Insight to be unveiled to do a price comparison and see if the Insight will really be an affordable hybrid.
BTW Honda, what happened to AVTEC? Toyota’s Valvematic has already been put into production cars in both Europe and Japan.
For now, check out hi-res photos and a few videos after the jump. Click here to read the rest of Honda Insight Hybrid Concept at Paris 2008
Honda’s Indian distributor Honda Siel Cars India Ltd CEO Masahiro Takedagawa says that Honda is seriously studying the possibility of developing a small diesel engine for compact cars such as the Honda City, especially for countries such as India where diesel cars are extremely popular thanks to the 30% price difference between petrol and diesel fuel.
Honda currently has a 2.2 liter second generation diesel engine called the i-DTEC. The first generation was called the i-CTDi and some of you may remember the cute ad campaign that debuted with the engine.
India will also become a key manufacturing base for Honda’s global supply chain as certain key engine components will begin to be supplied from there. The Indian engine component plant will mainly supply the ASEAN market, so in the future our 1.5 liter i-VTEC engines in the upcoming new Honda City may come from India.
The FTA which allows special duty benefits for 8 to 10 engine components traded between the two countries allows India to enter the ASEAN engine component market. This list may be widened in the future.
And who knows, we could see a 1.4 liter Honda City i-DTEC some time in the future too! Though it may have little hope of making it onto our shores as our diesel prices are now very close to petrol prices despite having very low quality, after enjoying many years of being alot cheaper than petrol.
Honda has an interesting website up - Drive Every Drop. It’s essentially an online travel show which showcases places to go to in the Asia-Oceania region such as India, Malaysia and Australia, but with an interesting twist to it.
Everytime a visitor visits the site and browses the contents, they get points in the form of “drops of fuel”. There are various routes that the Drive Every Drop team can take across each country. These drops can then be donated to these specific routes - sort of like voting for which route you’d like the team to follow. The Malaysian route for example starts in KL and you can either go north or south. The route has descriptions of what they will visit along the way so if one route seems more interesting to you than another, you can donate more drops to it.
Of course, the host Allan Yu (of Amazing Race Asia fame) goes on his journeys using Honda cars. The show is really quite eye-opening as we’ve always heard about how crazy the traffic is in countries like India, with horns being sounded every few seconds. Now you can actually watch whether its true or what it’s like as India is the first country that Drive Every Drop showcased.
Go to Drive Every Drop to watch the videos or look after the jump for an episode of Drive Every Drop showing the traffic conditions in India. Click here to read the rest of Honda’s Drive Every Drop Online Travel Show
Energy-efficient vehicle design specialists Oaktec have been working on Honda’s IMA hybrid system for motorsports usage since 2004 and has recently signed on Lotus Engineering to be a part of a project funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency to develop a stage rally and circuit race version of the Honda Civic Hybrid.
No specs have been released on what upgrades have been made to the Civic Hybrid to make it motorsports-worthy, but Lotus says the Civic Hybrid’s CVT transmission allows the car to be driven in full power constantly, making performance very accessible.
The motorsports Civic Hybrid developed by Oaktec and Lotus will be raced for the first time at the Dunlop Max Sport Cup at the Rockingham circuit on the 28th of September 2008 so perhaps we will learn more about the car after the race. What we know now is that the electric motor has been revised for more power and there is now an upgraded control system to allow for more aggressive brake energy regeneration.
Honda in China is sold by two companies - Dongfeng Honda and Guangzhou Honda. In the C-segment market, the Honda Civic is sold by Dongfeng Honda, leaving Guangzhou Honda with no car to pitch against Dongfeng’s Civic and other C-segment competitors such as FAW Toyota’s Corolla.
The C-Segment market must be quite important as it warrants Guangzhou Honda taking this problem into its own hands, with the support from Honda Japan of course. Guangzhou Honda will be putting a 1.8 liter motor in the new Honda City and will be stretching it to more Civic-like proportions to pitch it against Honda’s own Honda Civic.
As with all other 1.8 liter latest generation Hondas, the 1.8 liter motor is likely to be from the new R-series SOHC i-VTEC family of engines. As it is based on the City, the new car will probably carry over its rear torsion beam design and other technical features such as the positioning of the fuel tank underneath the passenger cabin.
Chinese publications are currently calling it the CC (City+Civic), and according to a Guangzhou Honda engineer, it will not be called the City and will get a new name. The new car will be priced at roughly the same level as the Civic, currently sold in China for about 150,000 yuan (about RM75,150). It may even be marketed under Guangzhou Honda’s separate “Li Nian” marque.
