Honda CR-Z Type R
Honda used to be one of my favorite brands… let’s say in 90′s, when I was a student dreaming about some tuned Civic with at least 100 bhp. Affordable and sporty – that was their thing. Revving CRX – producing 100 hp per liter of engine capacity! Recently they got a little “slow”… CR-Z didn’t get much reviews in favor of the car. I also had a chance to check what it’s worth and HERE is a little review from my side… Read more…
Honda CRZ
Some time ago I asked myself a question: What’s going on with Honda? Hoping that this weird trend Honda was presenting in recent years will somehow get reversed. Hoping that they will announce a new S2000 – faster, lighter and… better. That TypeR badge will fight back for it’s name – to lead again in the class. And instead, they release CR-Z model… (and here I should put some fancy “facepalm” jpg to express my feelings more precisely). Read more…
Honda Civic Type R - looking good, but...
I always liked cars made by Honda… Since I was a teenager. I respected the brand, considered myself as a fan… When I started studies, I wanted a Civic… A used one of course. Back then there was only Subaru and Honda for me. Two brands that had the edge I was looking for, being at the same time down to earth. In 1999 I became a proud owner of a 1991 Honda Civic. 1.4 liter, 90 HP. Perfect car choice for a student being on a budget (mpg was really good). Absolutely no equipment inside – made the car superlight, what gave it pretty good performance. That was then…
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The world car market is a complicated thing. Every major producer has it’s strategy, like every country has it’s local taste and characteristic. For ex. the US market doesn’t like diesel engines, don’t care about interior design much, must have huge bumpers. Europe on the other hand likes smaller cars, don’t use hybrids (cause diesel is cheap) and has worse prices on cars 
Also there are international brands that work only locally. French trio: Renault, Citroen and Peugeot are not present in US. Fiat and Alfa planned to go accross the ocean in 2010 – but due to current car industry situation, nobody knows if they will. Also brands already present in US, choose models that will be sold in US and Europe separately.
Renault, Alfa, Opel, Honda...
Below You will find a list of 7 cars, that I find to go under category “fun” cars. hey are available to buy in Europe, but were not (so far) introduced to the US buyer. They’re all affordable options.
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Recently I wrote a little “aggressive” comment about Prius, not being Eco friendly and expensive and ugly etc (link). I think that I had a bad day and the post didn’t sound as it should have:) I wasn’t against Toyota in this one. Well… excluding it’s ugliness… The topic was about Prius, but You can compare it to all this class Hybrid solutions that are branded as Eco. Ofc not including luxury cars like Lexus “h” models, which use electric engines to deliver extra power You don’t talk about ecology when You have 3 liter gasoline powered engine In this case: electric means fun.
But in this post I would like to think about the big picture: Diesel vs Hybrid. To find that “Vs” word, doesn’t actually fit here. These two are not actually against each other. I believe that soon enough we will see a diesel powered hybrid cars, which will make the best of these two.
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However terrifying this post title may sound – it’s not so scary. It’s about ranking of car producers, based on some Supplier Working Relations Index. Toyota lost a top place for Honda. So the news are good I don’t believe that Toyota’s market share, will drop significantly in US in the longer run. Probably just after many years of raising in all charts, there must be some corrective fall.
But it still makes me happy If I was a supplier, I wouldn’t sell to them Go Honda…
However there are some signals from the markets, that American buyers are turning to homemade products – including cars. It’s probably the crisis-caused local patriotism. Let’s see how it turns out in the future…
Here You can find a full article – Source: Bloomberg
