Re: Headline I thought I'd never see

Well, but that's where the challenge is now for Honda or anybody.

I guess the question is to what degree the new standards make sense? I've never heard that the old, ligher Hondas had any reputation as death traps.

I believe the air bags are a total waste of money and can really only be counterproductive, I guess with all the side airbags and crap that might be a hundred pounds - and more than a thousand dollars, right there. So if that's a sign, then probably 95% of the new standards are garbage.

J.

Reply to
JRStern
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"tww1491" wrote in news:ARvar.20742$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe11.iad:

I would not own another convertible,and sometimes,having the extra two "seats" is an advantage. plus,IIRC,the last Prelude had a fold-down or pass-thru rear seat.

the S2000 would make a great second car,though.

And, that's what it is. I kept my 06 I4 Accord coupe for to and from work etc. This is simply old age crisis. But S2k is far better than any of the C3 Vettes I had 40 years ago and an assortment of "old blighty" 60s era sports cars.

Reply to
tww1491

its biggest flaw was macpherson suspension.

Reply to
jim beam

the prelude with an s2000 engine would be a lot of fun, and as you say, it's a much more practical configuration. if they added the honda 4wd system, even more so. upgrade the engine output to that of the wrx or evo, and suddenly you have a real drivers car that would re-launch the whole honda ethos, even if people didn't actually buy them in quantity.

Reply to
jim beam

that's not true - there's nothing in the regulations regarding weight. they just make it hardER to build /cheaply/.

which is of course, the whole point, politically speaking. the manufacturers know the agenda is not really safety, it's to make cars heavier to negate the fuel savings of their better engines. and they know damn well that if they /did/ make a better lighter car that was significantly more economical, there'd be a shake-down like there was with toyota and the bogus throttle "problem". much easier to just kow-tow to the political [read: "oil lobbying"] machine and build a heavier car.

popular misconception. aluminum beer cans are much more high tech than their steel counterparts, yet they're cheaper. aluminum framed bicycles are often cheaper than comparable steel counterparts. aluminum cars are not prohibitively more expensive than steel. and with volume production, would be directly comparable since the material is easier to work and form. and you can get stiffer frames more easily leading to more design possibilities.

Reply to
jim beam

HA!! Love this one:

"Honda quite literally has become a North American car company headquartered in Tokyo, and that's a horrible combination," Jim Hall, principal of 2953 Analytics Inc., an auto consultant in Birmingham, Michigan, said in a phone interview.

Reply to
Elmo P. Shagnasty

the late 80's hondas were pretty much at the top of the game in that regard. great crash resistant frames, no abs, no airbags - and economical because of the weight savings.

they're good for a very limited percentage of the population - the people that drive hunched up close to the wheel. but i think darwinian natural selection of those people from the gene pool is a good thing - and certainly not one worth the nation wasting billions of dollars to oil despots for.

i couldn't agree more. all the time, money, weight and gasoline wasted lugging about "side impact protection" that is not a significant proportion of road impacts, and is pretty much impossible to /really/ protect since there is no room for an adequate crumple zone, is just insane.

i'll say it again to be boring - if passenger safety was the /real/ objective, we'd all have tubular safety cages, 6-point harness and helmets in our cars. then we could drive our 1600lb vehicles into the barrier at 200mph and walk away. just like indy.

Reply to
jim beam

honda's trojan horse:

John Mendel, "ex" frod.

honda japan would do well to, um, "audit" this guy.

Reply to
jim beam

jim beam wrote in news:jkgnd1$pdu$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

IIRC,Audi builds an aluminum car. a version of the A2,IIRC.

What bugs me is that side-impact regs have brought about taller cars,no more low sporty cars. newer small cars are several inches taller than older small cars. So they end up being tall and narrow,Ugh.

Reply to
Jim Yanik

i don't think that's a result of regulation, i think it's typical mba "focus group research" saying "people like to be up high", [i.e. the same idiocy that shoved the suv down our throats for so long] and /that/ is driving a voluntary design decision.

and i know i don't like suv's not being /able/ to "low beam" me at night because their lights are mounted so high. that's addressed by making the car higher too.

blame it all on suv's.

Reply to
jim beam

Jim Yanik wrote in news:XnsA01F6D097FE98jyaniklocalnetcom@216.168.3.44:

That's part of it, yes.

Side-intrusion regs basically dictate that cowl- and belt-lines be really high so as to reinforce the structure. This in addition to increased pillar-thickness and floorpan-reinforcement.

Side-curtain airbags (part of the effort to meet intrusion regs) cause pillars and rooflines to /really/ thicken. The B-pillars on all cars these days are at least 4-times thicker than those on my '91 Integra.

In addition, pedestrian-protection regs result in bulbous front-ends, and high cowls help with creating those bulbous fronts.

Like I said, you can have "safety", or you can have lightness. But you can't have both unless you start using materials and processes that put prices out of reach of most drivers.

Cars from 1990 were hardly death-traps. All we need to do is roll "safety" regulations back to what they were in 1990, and you'd have your original CRX back. But then a lot of activists would be unhappy, and a lot of bureaucrats would be out of work, so that will never happen.

Reply to
Tegger

Honda V-6s have possibilities in a sportier car. They've increased rated HP in the last couple years and could probably get more if they tune them like Acura does.

A Honda V-8 would be an interesting motor, if they did it.

Reply to
David E. Powell

"David E. Powell" wrote in news:1e3fcf7e-eecb- snipped-for-privacy@l14g2000vbe.googlegroups.com:

A number of years ago Honda officially stated that they would never made a V8 becuase they didn't think V8s were "green" enough.

But then around the same time they also said they'd never make their V6 any bigger thean 3.0 liters, so...

Reply to
Tegger

really? i just plowed through this turgid drivel

and can't find any such dictate. where do you get your information? can you post a cite?

there's nothing saying they have to be thicker. they just have to be stronger. and of course they have to be even stronger than before to withstand the weight of an even heavier car than before.

but getting back to the stronger point, have you ever looked at the windshield pillar on a convertible? did you know that that pillar has to be strong enough to support the whole car, and that to do so without additional connected structures such as the roof, requires more strength than the pillars on a conventional sedan? with those key points in mind, have you ever asked yourself why the convertible's pillar is still the same size as the sedan????

iow, you're just making this stuff up tegger. there is nothing in the regs dictating pillar size, simply strength. and increased strength, as evidenced by convertible versions of sedans, shows it can be done without bloat.

seriously tegger, where do you get this stuff?

myth, propaganda, b.s.

it's got nothing to do with "activists", and everything to do with oil companies fighting to increase vehicle weights to keep gasoline consumption up as engines become more efficient. perhaps if you weren't so blinded by your irrational hatreds of anything to do with u.s. regulatory environments*, you'd be able to actually see, and comment on, reality.

  • something i have to say is bizarre for someone who doesn't even live here.
Reply to
jim beam

and yet they made cvcc heads for g.m.'s v8's when they were trying to get g.m. to pick up their cvcc emissions technology.

Reply to
jim beam

jim beam wrote in news:jkkng9$4ci$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

IMO,a sporty small car does not need a V-6 or V8.

4 cylinders ought to do it nicely. if your small car needs more than a 4- banger can reliably develop,your car is too heavy.

Or are you discussing "supercars"? corvette-class? drag racers?

Reply to
Jim Yanik

indeed.

and then of course, you have the more readily available evo's and wrx's...

i'll go up to sears point on occasion and watch the weekend guys test. it's a "real" windy circuit, not that oval crap, and it's fun when you see a tricked prelude or integra wipe the floor with italian or german money.

Reply to
jim beam

Jim Yanik wrote in news:XnsA02080F428761jyaniklocalnetcom@216.168.3.44:

The sorts of vehicles Toyota and Nissan produce with V8s. Honda made an explicit decision not to participate in those market segments, and not to produce a V8.

Honda's official reason was that they didn't think V8s were "green" enough, and that they could achieve the same objectives using a "greener" V6. The old press releases are out there somewhere, I'm sure.

When Honda finally did make a pickup, it used a V6.

And thus they never did give Acura a V8 to compete with Lexus models that are so equipped. From a competitive perspective, that may have been a mistake: A RWD V8-powered RL might have been a viable competitor to Lexus instead of the slow-selling dud that was the V6 RL.

Reply to
Tegger

Agreed overall, except for the RWD part. The current AWD platform would be fine, but absolutely they needed to plug a V8 in for competitive reasons.

Reply to
Elmo P. Shagnasty

why? why are we absolutely fixated on v8's? i've lived in europe and /everywhere/ you have small little 4-bangers, and sometimes 6's doing everything we do in v8's. the only difference is that they don't seem to have a problem with the concept of using more than one ratio in their transmission. we seem to have the bizarre mentality that once the vehicle is rolling, we should be able to climb mountains, with a trailer and 6000lb boat attached, without ever shifting gear. it's completely incomprehensible to me.

Reply to
jim beam

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