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'Trouble-free day! No joke': Honda-powered Toro Rosso F1 car debuts

LONDON — Honda's Formula One partnership with the Toro Rosso team got off to a positive start on Wednesday with a seemingly smooth track debut of their new car on a limited mileage filming day in Italy. "Trouble-free day!! No joke," commented French driver Pierre Gasly on Twitter. New Zealander Brendon Hartley, who was at the wheel of the TR13 car at the wet Misano circuit, reported on Instagram that "the new girl ran super smooth." This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Honda is starting over with the Red Bull-owned team this season after three seasons of failure with former champions McLaren left the Japanese engine manufacturer's reputation in tatters. A behind-the-scenes documentary, "Grand Prix Driver," released on Amazon recently shone a spotlight on the tension between McLaren and Honda that eventually led to the relationship tearing apart. It also revealed how the troubles had started before the launch of the car and were fully exposed once testing in Barcelona started when the car broke down repeatedly due to engine failures. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. McLaren, who finished ninth out of the 10 teams last season, is now using Renault engines and hoping to be far more competitive. How Toro Rosso, and McLaren, fare this season will be among the intriguing sub-plots to the 21-race season that starts in Australia on March 25, with Mercedes and Ferrari again expected to be the frontrunners. Italy-based Toro Rosso, one of the smaller outfits on the starting grid, has taken the cynicism and gloom-mongering about its prospects in good heart. It put out a tongue-in-cheek Q&A at the time of the first engine fire-up that included the questions: "Did it take like six attempts to fire up?", "Did the engine blow up?" and "Did your factory catch fire after the engine started?" The respective answers were "Nope, the engine fired up on the first attempt," "Quite the opposite, it started just as planned" and "Our factory is perfectly fine, thanks for the concern." The final 'question' was simply, "Good luck, you'll need it." Reporting by Alan BaldwinRelated Video: Motorsports Honda McLaren Racing Vehicles F1 toro rosso

Honda stretches new Shuttle to Fit the Japanese market

While the Honda Odyssey that we get here in North America may be getting bigger with each passing generation, the minivans Honda offers in its home market are still pretty small. Like the new Shuttle. Set to be unveiled in full next month, the new Shuttle is a compact minivan that looks like a longer version of the Fit hatchback we get over here. In fact previous versions were marketed as the Fit Shuttle, but the little hatchback's handle seems to have been dropped from this latest model. It's still a five-seater, but with extra cargo capacity including under-floor storage, all in a compact, Tokyo-friendly form. It's not as small as a Kei car – the miniature vehicle segment which Honda covers with its N series – but would likely be far too small to suit the typical American family. Technical details are still forthcoming, but the new Shuttle will be available with a 1.5-liter direct-injection inline-four or a hybrid powertrain, just like the Fit. But unlike the little hatchback we know, it will also be available with all-wheel drive.

Honda speeds down memory lane with its first F1 car

Though most Formula One teams are based in the UK, they hail from places all around the world. There are teams from Russia, India and Malaysia, but in the 1960s, the idea of an F1 team coming from as far away as Japan was unthinkable in what was a predominantly European racing series. That's just the notion that Honda aimed to upset when it entered the car you see here in the 1964 Formula One World Championship.
With a 1.5-liter V12 dispensing 220 horsepower through a six-speed manual (its shifter necessitating the steering wheel mounted left-of-center), the 1964 Honda RA271 was built around an aluminum monocoque in a package that looks like a Formula Vee car you could erect in your garage, but it state-of-the-art when it was built. Speaking of which, Honda only built one, and today it's part of the Honda Collection Hall at Motegi, but the priceless racer made the trip down to Japan's capital so we could check it out at the Tokyo Motor Show. Awfully nice of Honda, we'd say. Check it out in our gallery of live shots from the show floor above.