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Honda helps Santa take his sled into the 21st century

If you had put nearly 75 billion miles on your only company car, it would most likely be pleading for retirement in every rickety way it knew how. That's Santa's situation, so St. Nick heads to his not-exactly-local-at-all Honda dealer for a new sled, and the company obliges with a red rider fit for the new millennium. But Honda doesn't try to shoehorn he of the white beard into an Civic on rails. Working from Crayon sketches of safe sleighs and wanting to insure a lengthy stint on Santa's "Nice" list, the Honda reps work up a bespoke offering from a block of clay, but still give it features like a rear-view camera and a cargo bay ejector platform fitted with a parachute. You can see their gift to Santa in the video above. And for some even more far out holiday offerings from Honda, check out their Honda Days videos featuring Skeletor singing a bro hymn to He-Man, G.I. Joe serenading Gem, and Gumby and Pokey singing whatever they can think of. News Source: Honda via YouTube Honda Videos

Honda, Hyundai and Kia get best word-of-mouth recommendations in US

Forget advertising, incentives and, yes, even our excellently crafted vehicle reviews, sometimes the best way for automakers to sell cars is still good ol' fashioned word of mouth. In an attempt to measure this "word of mouth" power, The Boston Consulting Group, a management consulting firm, has created a new study called the Brand Advocacy Index (BAI). The index takes a look at how various industries perform from person to person. Those industries include automotive, smartphones, grocery, mobile telecommunications and banking.
The study polled more than 32,000 individuals across Europe and in the US to come up with the top 55 brands in these various industries. On the automotive side of things, the top brands in the US were Honda, Hyundai and Kia, all tied at 63 percent. On a global scale, Volkswagen and Toyota scored the highest with a 65-percent BAI rating (both in France). The average BAI for auto industry players tallied 50 percent.
As for companies in other industries, Apple's iPhone was the index's top-rated smartphone, Trader Joe's was the highest recommended grocery store, Virgin was sat atop the mobile telecom industry and USAA was the top retail bank. Scroll down for the full press release on the new study.

Honda delays JDM Legend over quality concerns

Honda has been having some quality issues lately, to say the least. Most of those have revolved around the airbags supplied by Takata, but not exclusively. The new Fit Hybrid, for example, has been subject to five consecutive recalls in the year since it launched. And now the Japanese automaker is reportedly delaying the launch of its new Legend sedan. The Legend, for those unfamiliar, is what Honda calls the Acura RLX in the Japanese Domestic Market – a model that has been subject to a handful of recalls in the United States, affecting components ranging from headlights to seatbelts to suspension bolts. Such quality control issues have prompted Honda to delay the introduction of its flagship sedan in its home market, pushing its arrival in Japanese showrooms back from the fall (when the model was revealed) initially to January 22 and now to February 20, according to the report from Bloomberg. The extra time is earmarked the give Honda engineers the opportunity to look into potential problems with the vehicle's radar safety system and its advanced hybrid powertrain, before introducing it to the local market. Hopefully further recalls can be avoided once deliveries have commenced.