1992 Honda Civic Dx Hatchback, 1 Owner, Perfectly Stock, 69k Original Miles on 2040-cars

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Japanese spark plug giant NGK pleads guilty to price fixing, to pay $52M fine

The ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice into price fixing in the automotive industry has nabbed one more company breaking the law. Japanese parts giant NGK Spark Plug Company agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of pricing fixing and bid rigging in the in the US District Court in Detroit. Its punishment is a $52.1 million criminal fine and to continue to cooperate with the DOJ's sleuthing into the problem.
According to the DOJ, NGK conspired to fix prices on spark plugs, standard oxygen sensors, and air fuel ratio sensors on vehicles from major automakers in the US, including the former DaimlerChrysler, Honda and Toyota, in a scheme that ran from at least January 2000 to July 2011. The charge claimed that the company and its co-conspirators held meetings where they agreed on bids and price quotes that were submitted to the automakers.
With the latest plea, the DOJ has caught 28 companies and 26 executives for price-fixing and bid rigging in the auto parts industry, and they have collected $2.4 billion in criminal fines. In 2013, the feds brought nine Japanese suppliers down at once, to collect $740 million. Scroll down to read the DOJ's complete announcement of the case.

Honda Civic Type R Concept hits the ground running ahead of Geneva debut

We've seen it teased, caught it testing, hell, we've even driven the thing, but until just now, we hadn't been privy to the visual drama that is the all-new Honda Civic Type R Concept. Thankfully, the day before the start of the Geneva Motor Show is about as leaky as Robert Redford's sailboat.
We'll get the full details tomorrow - which may even include a discourse on Honda's 2.0-liter turbocharged engine that will make upwards of 280 horsepower and propel the car to Nürburgring-record-braking velocities. After all, the "Concept" portion of most Honda concept cars is generally lip-service only.
In fact, save for those blacked out windows and, perhaps, a couple millimeters of ride height and those extra-aggro wheels, we pretty much expect the production Type R to look like the beast you see here. Certainly the swooping form and 'roided wheel arches suit the boy-racer persona of the Civic very well; we wouldn't even put it past Honda's funky European arm to sell the final product with some version of that bi-plane wing.

Honda shows us 'The Challenging Spirit of Honda'... in Japanese

Just as Porsche has done with its lengthy Le Mans gear-up, Honda is is laying the table for its Formula One return more than a year before we'll actually see it on track. We've heard what it's 2015 engine will sound like, reminisced with the 1988 McLaren Honda MP4/4 and the 1964 Honda RA271 and spoken to the company's CEO about what F1 involvement could do for its production car engines.
The automaker has now released a video called The Challenging Spirit of Honda that traces the development of its in-house F1 program and the jump from motorcycles to the first RA270 F1 chassis in 1962, to the RA272 chassis that won the 1965 Grand Prix. The only catch: the video is in Japanese. However, you can read about the winning car in English, and the video ends with another sound check of the 2015 power unit. That is a universal language, and you'll find it being spoken below.