2007 Honda Odyssey Lx Mini Passenger Van 4-door 3.5l on 2040-cars

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Question of the Day: Ever consider driving a minivan?

Since I'm supposed to know something about cars, it happens all the time: friends and relatives ask me advice about what kind of vehicle they should get. Very often, the only type of vehicle that can check every item on their wish list (e.g., hauls lots of people and stuff, gets good fuel economy, has great crash-test ratings, can take four Great Danes camping, and so on) is a modern minivan... and, of course, nobody wants to hear this. I'm not a minivan person, they will wail, and so they end up with a cramped, fuel-swilling SUV or a not-so-space-efficient minivan-in-disguise CUV. So, is it worth becoming one of those minivan people in order to get the incredible usefulness of these masterpieces of vehicle engineering, or do you hold your head high and drive something that doesn't quite meet your needs? Related Video: Auto News Design/Style Chrysler Honda Toyota Minivan/Van question of the day questions

Toyota, Honda, Nissan and more collaborating to increase fuel efficiency

Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Suzuki and Daihatsu have announced an alliance that will see a push to improve fuel economy from both gas-powered and diesel-powered engines by as much as 30 percent before the end of the decade.
The newly assembled Research Association of Automotive Internal Combustion Engines put the roughly $20-million project together, with the Japanese government committing to half the cost while the eight manufacturers will chip in the rest.
According to Automotive News, the automakers will team up and share basic research on internal-combustion engines in a bid to cut costs. Eventually, the results of the research will find its way into a production vehicle, although it's unclear just when we'll see the fruits of this partnership on the road.

The 2017 Honda Civic Hatchback is here: all turbo, manual optional

The car you see above may look familiar. Honda showed a mildly conceptified version of the tenth-gen Civic hatch in March, and just last week a production model was caught being loaded onto a ship. Now it's finally here and official, and we can tell you that a hatchback Civic will once again be sold in the US starting this fall. Utility lovers rejoice. This new body style joins the somewhat-hatch-looking sedan and the coupe Honda has been selling for about a year. It will be available in LX, Sport, EX, EX-L, and Sport Touring trims, with that last one being a new addition. All will get Honda's 1.5-liter turbo four offered in upper trims of the sedan and coupe, but they won't all get the same amount of power: LX, EX, and EX-L models will use a 174-hp version, while anything that says Sport on the back gets bumped up to a 180-hp tune, thanks in part to the sweet center-exit exhaust you see on the car above. Torque doesn't vary between the trims – it's 162 lb-ft on all of them. The other exciting bit of news is that the hatchback (along with other 2017 Civics) will be available with the turbo engine and a manual – in the same car. (For 2016, turbo coupes and sedans were sold exclusively with the CVT, and the manual was offered only on lower trims with a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter four.) The six-speed stick will be standard on LX, Sport, and EX models, while the CVT will be available on those trim levels and standard on the others. The turbo engine is a charmer, and we have said from the start that it would be that much better with a stick, even though most people will choose the CVT anyway. But yay for freedom of choice. Equipment should pretty well mirror what's available on the same trims in the two- and four-doors, with the exception of that new Sport Touring trim. It sounds like that will be Touring equipment – including the Honda Sensing suite of safety tech (available on other trims), Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, and LED headlights – plus some more sport-like looks and the power bump. Civic hatches will be built exclusively at Honda's plant in Swindon, England. Fun fact: The last Civic hatch to be sold in the US, the oddball 2002–2005 Si, came from the same factory. Big changes come in the rear, obvs, and include a hatch with glass that's bisected (something Honda loves to do) by a spoiler spanning the taillights.