2008 Honda Civic Si on 2040-cars

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Ugly Moto makes beautiful motorcycle art [w/video]

Ugly Moto is a horrible name for a company that makes such wonderful motorcycle art. The creation of artist Francis Ooi, the company's illustrations focus on some of the iconic racing bikes of the 1960s and 1970s.
The artwork has an elegant simplicity that really makes it pop. It would fit just about anywhere from a home office to the bedroom of a young gearhead. Ooi has completed six illustrations so far covering classic cycles from Honda, Ducati, Yamaha and even Harley-Davidson. According to his site, the Suzuki RGB500 ridden by Barry Sheene will be the next one released. All of the prints are priced at $65 and are limited to 100 copies. They are all about 16.53 inches by 23.58 inches in size.
According to his website, these prints are just a hobby for Ooi and his real career is as the creative director at an ad agency. He creates the illustrations on his Mac, and he estimates that each design with about 800 components and layers takes about a month to complete. You can get idea of the process involved in the time-lapse video below.

180,000 new vehicles are sitting, derailed by lack of transport trains

If you're planning on buying a new car in the next month or so, you might want to pick from what's on the lot, because there could be a long wait for new vehicles from the factory. Locomotives continue to be in short supply in North America, and that's causing major delays for automakers trying to move assembled cars.
According to The Detroit News, there are about 180,000 new vehicles waiting to be transported by rail in North America at the moment. In a normal year, it would be about 69,000. The complications have been industry-wide. Toyota, General Motors, Honda and Ford all reported experiencing some delays, and Chrysler recently had hundreds of minivans sitting on the Detroit waterfront waiting to be shipped out.
The problem is twofold for automakers. First, the fracking boom in the Bakken oil field in the Plains and Canada is monopolizing many locomotives. Second, the long, harsh winter is still causing major delays in freight train travel. The bad weather forced trains to slow down and carry less weight, which caused a backup of goods to transport. The auto companies resorted to moving some vehicles by truck, which was a less efficient but necessary option.

Honda accused of not reporting all airbag problems

The Takata airbag recall that has afflicted a number of automakers may have just taken a very bad turn for Honda, which has already recalled over one million vehicles. Clarence Ditlow and the Center for Auto Safety have accused the Japanese manufacturer of failing to report two "injury-and-death" incidents. To determine just what happened, the company has initiated a third-party audit.
According to Bloomberg, CAS claims Honda failed to report fatalities in 2009 and 2013, a point Honda doesn't seem to contest, indicating that it didn't report so-called "verbal claims."
"It is our understanding that some manufacturers choose to include these types of verbal claims, and that these constitute the majority of the injury-and-death claims that they report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration," the company told Bloomberg via email. "We believe this practice accounts for the vast majority of the difference between the total number of injury-and-death claims reported by Honda compared to certain other manufacturers."