2004 Honda Accord Ex Coupe 2-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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KBB 2013 Brand Image Awards has some obvious and oddball winners

The sixth edition of the Kelley Blue Book Brand Image Awards have crowned a wide range of winners - in a couple of cases the recipient of the laurels might say more about KBB users than they do about the actual winner. Compiled from the responses of more than 12,000 shoppers on KBB.com over the past year, there are 13 categories broken into non-luxury, luxury and truck segments "representing the combined wisdom of the American car-buying public."
The award categories have been revamped this year, with some dropping off, some new ones appearing and at least one other given a new term. What isn't surprising is that Honda won Most Trusted Brand for the second year running, Best Value Brand for the third year in a row and took Best Overall Brand, which wasn't on last year's list of awards.
On our own shores, in the non-luxury categories Chrysler got Most Refined Brand and Buick took Best Value Luxury Brand. Neither one of those marques won anything in last year's Brand Image Awards, while Cadillac, which won Best Interior Design Brand and Best Comfort Brand last year - those awards disappeared this year - went home without a single accolade.

2015 Honda CR-V

Predicting the future direction of Honda's compact CR-V would have been difficult based on the Civic-derived model that first arrived on our shores for the 1997 model year. The newcomer, selling alongside the body-on-frame Passport (a hastily rebadged Isuzu Rodeo), was a cute compact crossover with four doors and an awkward curb-side hinged tailgate thanks to its Japanese home-market design. The five-passenger CUV offered generous interior room, but its wheezy 2.0-liter four-cylinder, with an output of just 126 horsepower and 133 pound-feet of torque, required 11.7 seconds to bring the 3,153-pound vehicle to 60 miles per hour. Rear drum brakes didn't help much in the stopping department, but Honda offered safety-minded consumers optional anti-lock brakes on the premium trim.
Nearly two decades after its introduction, the CR-V has matured in spectacular manner. The refreshed 2015 Honda CR-V, now in its fourth generation, is dimensionally within two inches of its ancestor in overall length and nearly identical in height and wheelbase. That consistency of dimension is impressive in this age of size and segment creep, and it stands as a testament to how 'right' Honda engineers got the model's original packaging. Of course, the CR-V hasn't stood still - nearly everything else about the best-selling compact CUV has improved in leaps and bounds.
But Honda is not the only player in this hotly contested segment today, so the automaker has taken the unusual step of updating its fourth-generation model just a few years after its introduction in an effort to keep it seated on the podium. To learn more about the automaker's improvements, and form our own impressions, we spent a day driving the CR-V in sunny Southern California.

Honda shows facelifted Euro Civic hatch with new Sport variant

Honda has released the details on its freshened Euro-spec Civic ahead of its debut at the 2014 Paris Motor Show, whose media days are set to open next week. Aside from a fairly pleasant visual upgrade for both the standard Civic as well as the Civic Tourer, Paris will also see the arrival of a new Civic Sport model.
The new Civic wears a sportier front fascia, while the rear end is home to a new, stylish set of LED taillights. Honda has also revised the rear bumper, side skirts and spoiler. In the cabin, a new, Android-powered infotainment system called Honda Connect takes its place in the center stack, providing typical functions like radio, media, navigation and Bluetooth, as well as the ability to browse the Internet. The entire system is confined by a seven-inch display that offers pinch, swipe and tap functions that should be familiar to smartphone owners.
The big news, though, is the new Sport model (shown above). While this isn't a Civic Type R - with its 1.8-liter, 140-horsepower engine, it's not even a decaf Type R - it does deliver some more aggressive looks to the Civic line. There are standard 17-inch wheels, as well as a new, sportier Type R-inspired front fascia and a color-coded rear spoiler. Alongside that 1.8-liter gas engine is a 118-hp diesel mill that displaces 1.6 liters.