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Automotive April Fools' joke roundup [w/videos]

Happy April, everyone. And we all know what this first day of the month means: April Fools' Day. Today is a national holiday for pranksters with the Internet acting as a serious enabler, and it's always fun to see what kind of vivid imaginations exist out there in the automotive world. The abundance of fake news gets a little old as the day rolls on, but we did manage to get in a few chuckles thanks to a handful of major automakers and automotive news outlets that got into the pranking spirit this year
Some of our favorites this year includes Subaru showing what happens when you combine a bunch of rumors, a Corvette some may have already thought was a joke or Honda providing some in-car innovation circa the late 1980s. Honestly, we're still waiting for official confirmation from Mitsubishi that the recently introduced 2014 Mirage is an elaborate April Fools' joke using a failed design intended for the 1995 Geo Metro. We dug up as much "official" OEM foolishness we could find, as well as some of our other favorites, and posted them all below.

Petrolicious profiles an 'original fanboy' and his 1987 Honda CRX Si

Christopher Hoffman is a guy I'd like to meet. He's profiled in the latest installment of Petrolicious, titled Original Fanboy, because of his love and dedication to his 1987 Honda CRX Si. And that's something I can relate to.
My personal car is a black 1988 Honda CRX Si. Road & Track executive editor Sam Smith sold it to me in December 2010 with some 93,000 miles on the odometer (and one bum tire!), and though I don't drive it nearly as much as I should, I'm madly in love with my little Honda. I take immense pride in owning this car, despite my recent neglect. As soon as we're done with this Polar Vortex crap here in the midwestern United States, I'm going to pull the CRX out of its wintertime storage and show it the love it deserves.
Like me, Hoffman fully understands the beauty of the CRX. It's not super powerful, or even quick (when it was new, its 0-60 time was just over 9 seconds), but it's extremely light, and comes from an era when Honda was churning out brilliantly simple cars. The steering is incredibly precise, the transmission perfect, and the chassis superb. Nearly 26 years after its birth, I adore every moment behind the wheel of my CRX. And thanks to this Petrolicious special, I know I'm not alone. Scroll down to watch the full episode.

Honda names first woman, foreigner to its board of directors

General Motors may have made headlines when it recently appointed the industry's first female CEO, but Honda has long lagged woefully behind the times when it comes to the diversity of its top management. In fact, its entire board has until now been composed entirely of Japanese men, with not a foreigner or a woman in sight. But as Reuters reports, that's all changing with the nominations to its latest board.
The slate of new directors named to Honda's board includes one Hideko Kunii, a gender-equality advocate and engineering professor from the Shibaura Institute of Technology. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Kunii spent the bulk of her career at Japanese electronic imaging company Ricoh. Alongside Kunii, Honda has also named Tomoko Mizoguchi to the board as responsible for the company's South American operations, making him the first foreigner to serve on the company's board of directors. (Well, almost: Mizoguchi was born in Brazil, but of Japanese ancestry.)
The appointments follow the recent switch Honda made in its official language policy from Japanese to English, signaling a shift in outlook for a company that has long stuck to traditional Japanese business models. Honda was the first of the major Japanese automakers to begin manufacturing in the United States, and has long relied on hiring local managers to run its regional operations around the world. It has, however, resisted placing foreigners on its board of directors until now, relying instead on senior male managers promoted from within its ranks to serve on its board. This in comparison to Toyota, which has seven foreigners and one woman on its 68-member board of directors, and Nissan, which has fifteen foreigners (including its chief executive) and one woman on its 58-member board.