Archive for Honda

To think that we had assumed Honda had gotten rid of it’s i-DSI engines, with the new City being available solely with a range of 4 cylinder SOHC i-VTEC engines, but no, we were wrong! The i-DSI engine is still alive and kicking in the new Honda Insight, as these scans from Honda’s official magazine in Belgium reveal.

The Honda Insight will be powered by an Euro 5-compliant 1.3 liter (1,339cc) i-DSI i-VTEC engine that has 8 valves (2 per cylinder), Dual & Sequential Ignition (2 spark plugs per cylinder), and variable valve timing that produces 88 horsepower at 5,800rpm and 123Nm of torque at 4,600rpm.

Not quite the 1.5 liter i-DSI that we are so familiar with, the one that produces its peak torque at a nice 2,700rpm, but looks decent. The somewhat anaemic power figures are helped by the IMA electric motor which adds another 13.6hp and 103Nm of torque. This engine is mated to a CVT transmission, which has optional steering wheel paddle shifts.

Two different trim levels are available – the Insight Comfort and the Insight Elegance. The Comfort has the necessities such as automatic climate control, airbags and etc. The Elegance version adds some extra equipment such as fog lamps, cruise control, heated front seats, automatic headlamps and wipers and the previously mentioned paddle shifts.

Honda rates the new Honda Insight at a consumption of 4.4 liters per 100km on the combined cycle, and 101g/km of CO2 emissions. More details will be revealed at the official unveiling, but for now check out the brochure scans after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of New Honda Insight hybrid details revealed early in Belgian official Honda magazine

Here’s something a little different from the many E36s here in Malaysia who have Nissan inline-6 turbo engines under their hoods. A Japanese dude decided to plonk in a F20 engine from the Honda S2000 into his 2-door E36 BMW 318is coupe’s engine bay, and Best Motoring featured his car! He must be trying to create the ultimate touge monster, the 50:50 balance of a BMW E36 3-Series combined with the relatively light, compact and high-revving engine in the S2000, and one that had the same cylinder count as the stock engine that came with his car. One that goes all the way up to 9,500rpm, good for 250 PS. Watch the video after the jump (I know some of you won’t be focusing on the car…) and you’ll see the stock BMW instrument cluster’s tachometer needle cross all the way into the area thats used to show the real time fuel consumption. Hardcore BMW fans will slam this as sacrilegious, but it’s insane nevertheless!

Click here to read the rest of E36 BMW 3-Series Coupe with Honda S2000 engine

Honda will be showing a couple of cars at the Tokyo Auto Salon 2009 tuner event starting this weekend, and the display cars will include two new Modulo concept cars – the Honda Sports Modulo S2000 Concept, and the Honda Sports Modulo Fit Concept (complete with daytime running light LEDs flanking the bumper air intake!). Not much details about these cars have been revealed yet, but at least we know what they are and how they’ll look like!

Modulo Concepts:
Honda Sports Modulo S2000 Concept
Honda Sports Modulo Fit Concept

Study Models by Honda Access:
Honda Life Styling Study
Honda Crossroad Styling Study

Competition Cars:
Honda Racing Modulo Civic Type R (Ranked second in Super Taikyu Series 2008, ST-class 4)

Motorcycles:
Honda SH125 Edo
Honda CBR 1000RR
Honda Shadow Classic 400
Honda Forza X

Production Cars:
Honda Sports Modulo Civic Type R
Honda Touring Modulo Accord
Honda Touring Modulo Accord Tourer
Honda Modulo Odyssey Absolute
Honda Modulo Odyssey
Honda Life
Honda Zest Spark
Honda Freed
Honda Fit Sports Neo

Look after the jump for a hi-res gallery of the cars!

Click here to read the rest of Honda cars at the Tokyo Auto Salon 2009

Here we go again, low-res product photos of soon to be unveiled products always get leaked out a week or two before their official proper unveiling date, and this time it’s the new 2nd generation Honda Insight hybrid. The Insight will make its debut at the 2009 Geneva Auto Show in March, but here we get to see full details of the production version more than 2 months earlier. In the photo gallery after the jump you will be able to see many angles of the exterior as well as close-ups of the car’s features, but they are far from high-res though. Also shown is a close-up of the car’s digital speedometer which changes colour according to your driving pattern in order to let you know whether you are driving fuel efficiently or not. Honda calls this the Ecological Drive Assist System.

Click here to read the rest of Production Honda Insight Hybrid images leaked ahead of Geneva 2009 debut

Click for larger image

When Honda’s CEO Takeo Fukui delivered his 2008 year-end speech in mid-December last year, everyone went nuts over the announcement that the Japanese company was going to cancel its new NSX project and will be pulling out of Formula One. After all, didn’t Soichiro Honda say if Honda does not race, there is no Honda?

But what some people missed is the official acknowledgment by the Japan HQ that Honda will be entering the entry-level small car segment for the first time, out of Japan of course. This juicy piece of information was previously only communicated by Honda’s presence in India, Honda Siel Cars India. Honda has plenty of small cars in Japan (like the Honda Life), thanks to the city lifestyle and the Japanese government’s K-car tax bracket.

Details on the new car are sparse, but an introduction is expected within two to three years. The new small Honda will be an A-segment hatchback like the Suzuki Alto, the Hyundai i10 and the Kia Picanto. The car will be built with minimal reliance on expensive materials to minimize the impact of fluctuating and rising raw material prices. With so many people flocking to commodity-investment in the futures market, things are going to be tough in this department. Honda can easily adapt the recently launched Honda Life’s chassis for the new small car. The K-car’s size and wheelbase is roughly similiar to other A-segment hatches.

Click for larger image

The same speech also confirmed what Honda Siel Cars India had revealed earlier, the development of a small displacement turbodiesel engine that will enable a diesel-powered Honda City, perhaps a 1.4 or 1.5 liter oil-burning motor producing power in various stages of tune ranging from about 60hp to 100hp?

Other juicy details in the speech include the possibility of Honda’s IMA hybrid system being added to medium and large models, that would mean the large vehicles in the Acura line-up and perhaps even the Honda Accord! Speaking of hybrids, the Honda CR-Z sports-hybrid will go on sale by end-2010, which is designed around the theme “the joy of driving”, which somehow these days also include the joy of watching the fuel gauge barely moving as you rack up the miles.

For those sticking to bikes, an all-new Honda Wave 100 for the ASEAN market with fuel injection will be introduced first in Thailand this month and subsequently other ASEAN markets. We should get it swiftly as Honda Japan has an official presence in the bike business here now. Another interesting piece of news is a new battery-powered electric motorcycle which will be launched in 2 years from now, somewhere in end-2010/2011. We already sort of knew this was coming, thanks to a teaser that was unveiled during the Honda Cub’s 50th anniversary.

And that’s about it, folks!

Vince Burlapp managed to procure this shot of what appears to be yet another facelift for the US-market Honda Odyssey. The Yanks don’t get the sleek low-rider Odyssey that Japan and the rest of the world get. Theirs is something bigger with a taller roof and equipped with sliding doors instead of car-like swing doors.

At first sight this seems to be a minor restyle of the existing 2009 Honda Odyssey, but with the odd nose from the Honda Pilot and the Honda Ridgeline slapped on. The motor under the hood will probably be updated to the new 3.7 liter V6.

A Youtube video seems to have surfaced on the internet with stills of a Japanese market Honda Insight brochure, revealing to us abit more of the production hybrid vehicle that Honda will be exhibiting at the 2009 Detroit Motor Show in January next year.

The shots also reveal that Honda has also gotten ready a Modulo kit for the Insight, for those who want to go green but still look stylish at the same time. Two choices of interior colour are available – something dark and the other is beige.

With the tax-exemption on hybrid cars in Malaysia right now, will Honda Malaysia Sdn Bhd offer this here? It all depends on whether they see a market for it and whether they can get an allocation from Japan. Speaking of Honda hybrids, the Civic Hybrid has still not been priced properly yet!

Source

Click here to read the rest of JDM Honda Insight Hybrid brochures leaked in a YouTube video?

Honda, who has slammed lithium ion batteries in the past for not being suitable for production usage in automobiles, has signed an agreement to set up a joint venture with GS Yuasa Corporation to develop and manufacture high-performance lithium ion batteries for hybrid automobiles. I guess they want to take matters into their own hands and make a lithium ion battery that conforms to their specifications of what an automotive-grade lithium ion battery should be!

The JV company’s initial capital investment of 15 billion yen will be a 51:49 split between GS Yuasa and Honda. The JV will be based in Minami-ku, Kyoto, and a factory is planned to be built at GS Yuasa’s existing Osadano site in Kyoto. The new company’s name is yet to be determined.

The company will also manufacture batteries based on the GS Yuasa EH6, an existing lithium ion battery. This could be the battery that’ll power Honda’s first li-ion hybrid.

Shortly after announcing Honda’s withdrawal from Formula One, Honda’s Takeo Fukui has announced that the new Honda NSX project has been scrapped, though some are speculating that it’s actually just frozen for the time being. Apparently the move is part of efforts to cut costs in the increasingly challenging automaker environment.

The Honda NSX would have been a supercar with a screaming V10 mounted up front, a departure from the original NSX’s V6-powered mid-mounted layout. In fact, there have already been prototypes sighted on test in places like the Nurburgring, but I guess it’s just not meant to be, for now at least. Instead, expect any dedicated sports car offerings coming out of Honda to be small, light and come with a fuel cell or hybrid engine, pretty much like the Honda CR-Z Concept, in line with the green image that Honda is working hard to project now.

Honda Malaysia Sdn Bhd finally brought us the 2009 Honda City. For those that already know pretty much everything about the car thanks to this blog’s detailed coverage in the past, let’s quickly get down to what’s important, the price!

The 2009 Honda City comes in 2 variants, the Honda City 1.5S and the Honda City 1.5E. The 1.5S is the lower end variant, priced at RM84,980 OTR with insurance while the top of the line is the Honda City 1.5E priced at RM89,980 and includes full specs such as larger wheels and paddle shifters.

The City comes with a 3 year warranty and 6 months free servicing. For the full scoop on the Honda City for the Malaysian market, continue reading this story after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of 2009 Honda City 1.5 E and S launched in Malaysia!