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Honda reveals next-gen Fit Hybrid

Psst! Remember late last month when we showed you those Japanese magazine scans purporting to show the next Honda Fit? The ones with the markedly more aggressive snout and Cuisinart-blade alloys? Yup, they were the real deal, but they weren't the standard model, they were images of the new Hybrid. We know this because Honda has just released a handful of images and some details on its forthcoming gas-electric hatchback, and the images line up perfectly.
The big story for the third-generation Fit Hybrid will be the fuel economy, naturally. Honda says it has achieved economy ratings of 36.4 kilometers per liter - 86 miles per gallon - on its home-market cycle, highest among all hybrid models in Japan and a 35-percent improvement over the current Fit Hybrid, a model not sold in the US.
Honda says it has achieved economy ratings of 86 mpg on its home-market cycle.

Next Honda Ridgeline previewed in sketch

Honda's big debut at the 2015 Chicago Auto Show may be the all-new Pilot crossover, but the Japanese automaker has released another juicy morsel for us here in the Windy City. Previewed in a sketch, Honda is giving us our first glimpse at the next-generation Ridgeline pickup (note that the drawing pictures the truck on an actual ridgeline – good one, guys). The Ridgeline always sort of steered away from conventional pickup truck wisdom, using a unibody construction with passenger-car roots. We don't know much more about the new truck, the company only saying that the next Ridgeline "will take the original's award-winning performance, comfort and utility to new levels with completely new styling that communicates unmistakably that it's a pickup, yet with a uniquely Honda flair." It's unclear exactly when the new Ridgeline will debut, though Honda expects it to go on sale sometime next year.

WSJ investigation reveals Takata may have hidden testing failures

We're not sure how much more Takata can get wrong concerning its airbag fiasco. The Wall Street Journal says it reviewed internal documents submitted during litigation that reveal US engineers had concerns about altered test data for at least a decade, from 2000 to 2010. This comes after Taktata's largest customer, Honda, stopped doing business with the company, publicly calling Takata out for "misrepresented and manipulated test data." On top of that, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hit the Japanese company with an open-ended fine of $70 million. Ford took away its business, as have Toyota and Mazda. The latest recall tall has surpassed 19 million vehicles in the US alone. The in-house memos show US employees complaining among themselves that their Japanese equivalents were burying validation test failures and changing the results of validation tests. Such tests are conducted to show automakers that Takata products met specification, and employees specifically cite Honda as the recipient of those edited or redacted reports. One US engineer wrote that the "prettying up" of data "confounded my engineers," and "has gone beyond all reasonable bounds and now most likely constitutes fraud." The engineer apparently said his team made sure that the products were up to spec by using alternative data. Takata said the issues the Journal article covers don't have anything to do with the exploding airbags, and that in one case the problem with the airbag inflator was resolved, and in another case the problem airbag inflators didn't reach production. Takata admitted to the Journal that there have been past instances of "selective, incomplete or inaccurate data" in customer validation reports and apologized, laying the situation at the feet of employees trying to meet production deadlines. News Source: Wall Street JournalImage Credit: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images Government/Legal Recalls Honda Safety