2011 Honda Fit Sport With Navigation on 2040-cars

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Honda's new City hints in India at US-bound Fit sedan [w/videos]

While car buyers on these shores may think of the Civic or Accord as the prototypical Honda sedan, in the Asia and Oceania regions, it all comes down to the City. Based on the Honda Fit, the City is a compact sedan that's currently sold in 55 countries around the world, and now Honda has revealed the newest version.
Standing essentially as a Fit sedan (much as the Vezel debuted as a Fit crossover), the new fourth-generation Honda City is as wide as the hatchback on which it's based, but stretches longer on a lengthened wheelbase and sits lower. Power comes from a 1.5-liter inline four in either gasoline or diesel form, mated to an unspecified transmission that we'd have to assume is either a manual or a CVT.
Styling looks familiarly Honda, and while it may be hard to tell from the few stock, detail and live reveal images the Japanese automaker has provided us with thus far, it appears slicker form than other compact hatchback-based sedans like the Ford Fiesta or Mazda2. Fortunately IndianAutosBlog has uploaded a couple of videos from the reveal, which we've included below along with the press release.

Five bikes from EICMA you need to know about

Each and every year, the world's biggest motorcycle manufacturers gather together in Milan, Italy to show off the latest and greatest machinery that will soon be offered to dealerships the world over. It's called EICMA (Esposizione Internazionale Ciclo Motociclo e Accessori), and this year's crop of new motorcycles is just as exciting as ever.
We've selected five of the coolest motorcycles shown at this week's show, including models from Aprilia, BMW, Ducati, Honda and Yamaha. Join us down below for a high-performance, two-wheeled Italian journey.

Honda underreported 1,729 claims of injuries or deaths since 2003

Among these underreported cases were eight Takata airbag inflator ruptures not submitted. Following an independent audit of its safety reporting procedures, Honda has found massive holes in its methodology and practices that resulted in 1,729 claims of injuries or deaths going unreported to federal authorities dating back to July 2003. The cases should have been submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of its quarterly Early Warning Reports (EWRs) under the TREAD Act, but they fell through the cracks for a variety of reasons. Honda blames the underreporting on three factors: data entry errors, computer coding problems and "an overly narrow interpretation of what constituted a 'written notice' under the TREAD Act." The first two issues were related to the computer program that collected the claims. If employees didn't enter a date in the "written claim received" field, then they were omitted from the EWRs. Also, the company's internal component codes didn't always match those used by NHTSA, and only the ones that were the same were disclosed. Finally, third-party documents, including police reports, were not considered. Honda says the computer error is now corrected, and the company is updating its data entry training. In the future, written and oral claims will be included in EWRs, as well. Among these underreported cases were eight Takata airbag inflator ruptures not submitted in Honda's EWRs, including one death and seven injuries. However, the automaker claims NHTSA was already aware of all of these incidents either from the agency's own records or from the company's notification outside of the EWR process. Unfortunately, this problem could have been stopped much sooner. The issue was first brought to light in 2011 but didn't result in a followup. NHTSA advised the automaker of discrepancies in January 2012, and it still did nothing. This third-party audit wasn't commissioned until September 2014. "Honda acknowledges that it lacked the urgency needed to correct its problems on a timely basis," it says in the announcement. Separately, the Japanese government is starting an investigation, as well. According to Reuters, the Japanese Transport Minister has created a task force to look into the Takata recalls and find out whether Honda under-reported incidents there. Scroll down to read the company's entire statement on the third-party investigation.