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Honda aiming for new mpg-record on European hypermile drive

Here's a warning that there will be a Honda Civic clogging up the right lane of a bunch of highways throughout Europe next month. Honda wants to set the Guinness World Record for best fuel economy for a car going through the European Union's 24 contiguous countries. To do so, we can't expect any high speeds on the autobahn. Two of Honda's finest from its UK factory will hit the road June 1 for a 25-day journey in a Honda Civic Tourer that will take the pair through two-dozen countries in 25 days. That means about 370 miles of very measured driving per day. The Civic Tourer will be equipped with a tracking device and other telematic services, and the goal is to see what kind of fuel economy the pair can get from the car's 1.6-liter i-DTEC engine. Honda isn't saying what kind of fuel-sipping figure it's looking to achieve over those three-plus weeks, which will take the car through countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France and Spain, but the Japanese automaker is shooting for a fuel economy record irrespective of any type of powertrain, hybrids included. Take a look at Honda's press release below, and if you want to avoid or find the car en route, you can watch it on this tracker site. Honda targets new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for fuel efficiency with 8,500mile drive across Europe Honda will put the real-world fuel economy of its super-efficient 1.6 i-DTEC engine to the ultimate test in an 8,500mile drive across all 24 contiguous EU countries, with the aim of setting a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for fuel efficiency. On Monday 1st June 2015, two members of Honda's European Research & Development (R&D) team will climb into a Honda Civic Tourer and set out on an epic journey from Aalst, Belgium. Heading towards the Netherlands and Germany, their trip will see them navigate the Continent in a clockwise direction, with the aim of returning to their starting point some 25 days later, on June 25th, having covered a planned total of 8,459miles. The GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title attempt comes on the back of several independent tests which have proven Honda's 1.6 i-DTEC engine to consistently out-perform its quoted fuel efficiency in real-world driving conditions. Keen to once again underline this performance and in the challenging spirit for which the brand is famed, Honda aims to set a benchmark with a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title never before attempted in Europe.

2014 Honda Accord V6 Touring

America's midsize sedan segment is one of the most crowded and fiercely competitive in the business. The Toyota Camry has long been our nation's best seller, while the Honda Accord has dutifully come in second place, like some sort of codependent Cal Naughton Jr. riding Ricky Bobby's back bumper.
There was that one year, 2001, when the Accord briefly broke the Camry's streak, marring what would today have been a 17-year-long run of best-selling car titles. The Accord pulled the opposite move in 2011, letting sales slip far enough to let not only the Toyota by, but the Nissan Altima and Ford Fusion, as well. Aside from those anomalies, the Camry and Accord have been first and second in this segment since before many of you readers could even drive.
It's 2014, and these frenemies have never before faced a threat to their world order as strong as today's class of family sedans. The aforementioned Altima and Fusion are perhaps the most capable challengers, but the Chevrolet Malibu, Hyundai Sonata, Kia Optima, Volkswagen Passat and Mazda6 are all capable of convincing new buyers to walk their way.

Honda Civic Type-R caught out in the cold

The Honda Civic Type R already has an award winning ad campaign, and the concept keeps showing up at auto shows around the world. What the model doesn't possess yet are firm production specs, and as these latest spy shots show, Honda is still doing cold weather testing in Sweden on its future hot hatch. The striking thing about this test car is just how similar it is to an earlier version wearing no camouflage at all. Both sport a toned down body kit compared to the concepts. The obfuscation makes the exact lines on this latest prototype hard to spot, but the two models appear practically identical. Although, at the rear, the taillights might now be slightly reshaped, compared to earlier. As of the 2014 Paris Motor Show, the Civic Type R was scheduled for a 2015 release in Europe. In concept form, it sported a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder making 276 horsepower and routed power to the front wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox. Adaptive dampers and a system called "steer axis" to reduce torque steer were promised to get the grunt to the ground effectively. The company even had a goal of making the new hatch the world's fastest front-wheel drive vehicle around the Nurburgring Nordschleife, too. Rumor has it, this potent mill might even cross the Atlantic for a Honda product in the US. Until then, check out the gallery to see the latest shots of what the Type R has in store for Europe at some point in 2015.