2010 Honda Element goes to the dogs -- in a good way

Forget about making cars just to make drivers happy -- American Honda is rolling out the red carpet for their dogs too.

The 2010 Honda Element includes a luxurious Dog Friendly™ pet accommodation package with equipment like an extendable ramp for Rover to enter and exit the vehicle, a dedicated fan (because dogs get hot too), and a spill-resistant water bowl.

"The Honda Element has long been recognized as an accommodating vehicle for people with active lifestyles involving sports and hobbies," said Vicki Poponi, assistant vice president of Product Planning for American Honda.

"The new Dog Friendly Element takes that concept to a whole new level with specially designed features for dogs and their owners."

These features are more advanced than just four-legged frivolities -- they also improve the safety of transporting dogs in the car. The Dog Friendly equipment secures the dog in the Element’s cargo area with soft, seat-belt-grade nylon webbing, which keeps the dog from interfering with the driver and prevents pet and people injuries in the event of a frontal collision.

But the spoiled pooch can be proud of this ride: The Dog Friendly version (with an option price of $995) also includes a cushioned pet bed for afternoon naps and all-weather rubber floor mats decorated with an attractive toy bone pattern. Owners can brag about their Dog Friendliness with included emblems that stick onto the outside of the car.

You can even decorate the second row of seats with a dog-patterned cover that matches the dog’s bed fabric. Aww.

The 2010 Honda Element will be at dealerships nationwide by mid-October. Dog owners can purchase the Dog Friendly Element on Nov. 16. 

-- Kelsey Ramos

Photo credit: American Honda

Honda toasts 50 years in the U.S.

Honda is celebrating a milestone today — the 50th anniversary of its arrival in America.

Of course, as those of us who remember the Eisenhower administration may recall, the Japanese company drove into the U.S. market on two wheels instead of four. (Toyota had arrived on these shores almost two years earlier with its Toyopet Crown sedan.)

Honda’s first U.S. product lineup featured only motorcycles, ranging in size from tiny 50cc scooter — known as the Supercub in Japan and the Honda 50 in the U.S. — to bikes in the 300cc range.

After mechanical woes stalled sales of the larger bikes, the staff working out of American Honda Motor Co.’s storefront headquarters at 4077 Pico Blvd. in West L.A. focused their efforts on the 50, which caught on with the general public and helped broaden the appeal of motorcycles in the U.S. beyond the black-leather-jacket crowd. (The still-memorable ad tagline, “You meet the nicest people on a Honda,” certainly helped in this regard.)

The arrival of the two-door N600 in 1969 marked Honda’s entry into the U.S. car market. The N600 was really small (only a foot and a half longer than today’s two-seat Smart car from Mercedes-Benz) and sold for $1,275. Road & Track didn’t mean it in a good way when it said “every outing is an adventure” in the boxy car and it was replaced in 1973 by the Civic hatchback.

Honda Insights -- both old and new -- celebrate Earth Day in Anaheim

American Honda Motors celebrated Earth Day at the Honda Center in Anaheim with a multi-sponsored festival, a Honda Insight (the old one) “homecoming” and a public ride-and-drive of the 2010 Honda Insight that recently went on sale.

Although only about 40 of the older hybrids showed up to the event, Honda spokesmanKurt Antonious mentioned that a few owners traveled thousands of miles to be there for the “Homecoming.” “I’m amazed with how far people have come to join us today… .One drove all the way from New Jersey.”

On hand for the green event was hypermiler Wayne Gerdes of Wadsworth, Ill., -- the man who laid claim to coining the term “hypermiler” to describe a driver who gets the maximum mpg with sometimes extreme driving habits. Wayne, who runs the online forum, Cleanmpg.com, said he first posted the term on a popular autos forum just after Sept. 11.

'Offset' crash tests find higher risk for smaller cars

There’s an old saying -- you can’t repeal the laws of physics. That may be the discussion right now at several small-car manufacturers today.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, known for its slow-motion car crash videos, sent the Honda Fit crashing into a Honda Accord, the Smart ForTwo into a Mercedes C-Class and a Toyota Yaris into a Toyota Camry -- each at 40 miles per hour. The results indicate what safety you may be trading for efficiency when your mode of transportation shrinks.

The tests are called "offset" crashes. The cars crash not quite head on, similar to what would result when a car strays over the center line, and the damage can easily intrude into the passenger compartment. Each of the small cars sustained damage the institute believes would lead to injuries for their occupants.

In a statement, Adrian Lund, president of the Arlington, Va.-based institute, said, "Though much safer than they were a few years ago, minicars as a group do a comparatively poor job of protecting people in crashes, simply because they're smaller and lighter. In collisions with bigger vehicles, the forces acting on the smaller ones are higher, and there's less distance from the front of a small car to the occupant compartment to 'ride down' the impact. These and other factors increase injury likelihood."

The Smart ForTwo had “extensive” damage...

Honda takes a walk

At Honda, mobility doesn’t just come on wheels.

The Japanese automaker has been developing what it calls “walking assist devices,” which are designed to increase the stamina and mobility of people with weak leg muscles. Honda said today that the devices, unveiled in Japan last year, will have their U.S. debut at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit April 20-23.

The devices — dubbed Stride Management Assist and Bodyweight Support Assist — grew out of Honda’s research into robotics. The company is testing a humanoid robot known as Asimo that is designed to respond to the thoughts of its human operator.

“A lot of people think of Honda as just a car company or just a motorcycle company,” spokeswoman Alicia Jones said. “But Honda has always thought of itself as a mobility company, and these devices are intended to further human mobility.”

According to Honda, the Stride Management Assist is a lightweight, wearable device designed for people who have weakened leg muscles but can still walk on their own. Strapped around the waist and thighs, it contains small motors and a computer that monitors the user’s walking motion and uses the information to provide assistance in lengthening stride and regulating walking pace. See videos after the jump.

Back-to-back hybrid smack: Insight vs. Prius

 

In the handful of people who might actually enjoy seeing gasoline return to $4 a gallon, let's include marketing managers for the 2010 Honda Insight (shown left) and 2010 Toyota Prius (shown right), a pair of all-new hybrids set to do battle this spring. They'll be successful with gas at $2 a gallon, but they'd likely be smash hits if gasoline prices go back up.

Though both names are familiar, these are two new cars. The Honda Insight introduced gasoline-electric hybrids to the U.S. market in 1999, but that car was a little hot dog-shaped two-seater that never sold in big volume. Toyota was a little later to the hybrid party with the Prius, but it was a four-door with a usable rear seat, and it became a far bigger hit than the Insight. It still sells well - the Prius accounts for more than half the hybrid cars sold in the U.S.
  
For 2010, the Insight is back, but it's an entirely different car - in fact, the resemblance to the Prius is undeniable. It's a four-door hatchback with room for five, powered by a 1.3-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine, aided by an electric motor.
  
The 2010 Prius is slightly larger than the 2009 model it replaces, and is classified by the EPA as a "midsize" car, while the Insight is a "compact." Really, the difference in interior space is not that noticeable. The Prius' 1.5-liter four-cylinder gas engine is now 1.8 liters, and while the basic hybrid battery pack is essentially the same as in 2009, the rest of the drive system is, Toyota says, 90 percent new.
 
Here are the dueling hybrids in a nutshell:

The Honda DN-01: automatic + motorcycle = smooter?

To drivers, we motorcyclists seem like a unified group. We’re death-wishing two-wheelers, splitting lanes, cutting to the fronts of lines and otherwise conspiring to make their daily commutes miserable. But those of us who are actually on those two wheels know differently. We’re one of the most segregated communities around.

Cruiser. Sport bike. Scooter. The bikes we choose to ride are often shorthand for the sorts of people we actually are (or at least believe we are), which is why the Honda DN-01 is such an interesting machine. Billed as a "crossover," it blurs the lines between the biggest categories in two wheels, and it does so in a way that doesn’t feel like an abomination or identity crisis.

New to the U.S. for 2009, the automatic transmission DN-01 may look like a blenderized version of Honda’s entire motorcycle catalog, but it is, truly, its own thing. Lacking a design or market corollary, the only clues the DN-01 offers about its rider is that she (or he) is open-minded enough to try something different, is either bored (or scared) of shifting and probably has a job. Priced at $14,599, the DN-01 isn’t exactly cheap.

But you get a lot for that money. The biggest news about the DN-01 is, of course, its groundbreaking transmission. Employing fluids to push a series of swash plates back and forth, its hydro-mechanical, aka human-friendly, transmission, or HFT, is the first of its kind on a street bike. First engineered for Honda’s off-road products, the HFT can be operated in two modes -- fully automatic and manual.

Both operate flawlessly, offering different versions of the same sort of fun. In fully automatic mode, the DN-01 is a no-brainer. You just fire it up, twist the grip and go. Moving through the six gears is almost magical, i.e. you don’t feel the gears shifting. At all.

Honda's hybrid pricing gambit: the sub-$20,000 Insight

Honda's much-anticipated Prius fighter may double as a recession fighter.

The Japanese automaker said today that when the 2010 Honda Insight hybrid hits dealer lots in two weeks, it will carry a base price of $19,800. That puts an end to months of speculation over just how much less expensive the new Honda would be than the Toyota Prius, currently the top-selling hybrid in the U.S.

At under twenty grand, the Insight will be the least expensive new hybrid available in the country; even the more feature-laden EX version of the Insight, which includes alloy wheels and paddle shifters, will be under the Prius' $22,000 starting sticker. By pricing it so low -- almost $4,000 less than its own Civic hybrid -- yet delivering a car that looks and behaves remarkably similar to the current Prius, Honda is making a risky bet that cost-conscious consumers will be lured to choose its hybrids over non-hybrid alternatives. Meanwhile, with a new far more fuel-efficient 2010 Prius set to hit showrooms in June, the Insight could lose out on buyers who care more about green (as in ecology) than green (as in dough).

Honda apparently has its eyes trained on a broader swath of customers. The Insight, said Dick Colliver, executive vice president for Honda's U.S. sales arm, "brings the cost of entry for hybrid technology within closer reach of an entirely new car-shopping audience." The automaker hopes people who otherwise wouldn't have considered a hybrid will choose the Insight because it's cheaper to buy and operate than comparable vehicles.

Checkered fate: Honda S2000, Cadillac XLR go buh-bye

In “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell wrote: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Socrates said the same thing but was a miserable singer. In any event, the days of wistful remembrance are here for the Cadillac XLR and Honda S2000 -– and you can bet other pricey niche products are slouching toward the gallows too (Lexus SC430 mebbe?).

General Motors revealed this week that it would lay off 154 workers at the Bowling Green, Ky., factory where the XLR is produced alongside its chassis-mate, the Chevrolet Corvette. The XLR was always an unlikely story. Born of Cadillac’s Art and Science design vocabulary as first iterated on the Evoq concept car (1999), the XLR was a super halo for the brand, and its strange and ambitious shape looked like absolutely nothing else on the road -– “a malevolent crystal grown in zero gravity,” is how I described the car in 2003. Under the provocative sheetmetal was a Corvette chassis, with transverse leaf spring rear suspension and a de-tuned Corvette motor. It was also GM’s technology spear point: The XLR was the first car in the world to use the Delphi’s magnetorrheic suspension, which varies shock rates in real time. In terms of sales you could credit the Escalade or the CTS with Cadillac’s resurrection, but the brand’s styling always gravitated toward the XLR.

Well, that was fun. Cadillac sold only 1,250 XLRs in 2008 (for between $80,000 to $100,000, give or take a few thousand) and considering the sorry state of things, a redesign of the aging roadster was apparently out of the question. Goodnight, sweet prince.

Ditto Honda’s S2000, a fantastic, minimalistic roadster that -– with its bonkers-with-rpm 2.2-liter, 240-hp four cylinder -– felt like throwing a saddle on a bumblebee. The car received a brush-up for the 2004 model year, and a hard-edged, weaponized track version (the CR) in 2008, but the sales just weren’t there. Honda says it sold just 2,538 units in 2008 (at or above $34,000), adding to a respectable U.S. total of some 65,000 units since 1998.

With the retirement of the S2000, Honda’s commitment to adrenaline is very much in doubt. The next-generation NSX –- a mid-engine exoticar -– has been spiked and Honda notoriously pulled out of Formula 1 last year. So what will go fast and wear the flying H? A Fit Type R? Oh, what troubled times we live in.

And speaking of big yellow taxis …. Auto-parts maker Checker of Kalamazoo, Mich., maker of the unforgettable Checker Marathon taxi cab, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month. The company ceased production of taxi cabs in 1982, but there has never been -– nor will there ever be -– a better taxi. As someone who hung out in New York in the early 1980s, I can tell you the sins possible in the jump seats of a Checker Marathon would stagger the imagination.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

-- Dan Neil

Photos: GM, Honda, Flickr

Top 10 turkeys of the L.A. Auto Show

The L.A. Auto Show runs through Thanksgiving weekend, which seems appropriate, because there is a lot of turkey on the show’s menu. From Honda’s hydrogen-powered hypercar -- a guess that’s tofurkey, of a sort -- to a huge, steroid infused, poultry-yellow Rolls-Royce that is lacking only a wattle, the show’s collection of large, flightless birds is certainly worth a, um, gander.

I know, I know. You’re stuffed. You’ve loosened your belt, maybe even undone your trousers … ahhh. But perhaps there’s room for one … more … tiny …morsel?

>>Click here for the complete list: Top 10 turkeys of the L.A. Auto Show. After-dinner chit-chat can commence in the comments section.

-- Dan Neil

Photo: Honda's tofurkey, er, FC Sport concept. Credit: Gabriel Bouys / AFP / Getty Images