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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

Honda patents engine with different cylinder displacements

A basic rule of engine design states that the displacement of a cylinder is equal to the engine's total displacement divided by its cylinder count. Honda, according to a recently surfaced Japanese patent, is looking to break that rule with an engine containing cylinders of different sizes. We've done our best to translate it from patent-ese. The idea is that different-sized combustion chambers give more flexibility when any combination of cylinders are deactivated, or rested. Because the different numbers can be combined in various ways, it provides more and smaller increments than would an engine with equal-displacement cylinders. Take a 2.0-liter four-cylinder, for example. Following the golden displacement rule, each of the four cylinders has a volume of 500 cc, giving displacement increments of 500 cc when any cylinder is deactivated. But suppose instead that the four cylinders displace 300, 425, 600, and 675 cc, respectively. This would give the engine 15 available displacements instead of just four, and the spacing between each option would be far less than 500cc. As a result, those different virtual displacements would provide more adjustment between power and efficiency than a cylinder-deactivation system can on a conventional engine. Honda's patent describes cylinders with equal bore size, with the displacement from cylinder to cylinder varying based on the crank throw radius – the longer the throw, the longer the stroke and the larger the displacement of that particular combustion chamber. The patent describes how the cylinder sizes would need to be arranged to spread the load on the crankshaft and presumably limit vibration that would be introduced by the different pulse magnitudes. If we're interpreting things correctly, the largest cylinder (the one with the longest crank throw radius) sits in the middle of the bank with the smaller ones alternating on either side as they decrease in displacement. This concept is described for multi-cylinder inline and V-type engines of various sizes. The patent was filed in March of 2014 and published in January of this year. Whether or not this arrangement will reach production is of course unknown, but the advantages in terms of both efficiency and power seem promising. Related Video: News Source: Japan Patent Office via Auto Guide Green Honda Fuel Efficiency Technology patent

Honda scores big in Automobile Advertising of the Year Awards [w/videos]

This year the Detroit Auto Show didn't just celebrate the automobile, it celebrated how we find out about the automobile, too. Partnering The One Club, this year introduced the 2014 One Show Automobile Advertising of the Year Award to Cobo Hall, celebrating winners in five different categories of advertising: broadcast television, online, interactive, experiential, and print/outdoor. Winners in those categories were judged by 50 creative directors and journalists, while a Public Choice category was chosen from among nearly 20,000 online votes.
Honda walked off with three of the six awards, its Hands spot taking Broadcast honors, its Sound of Honda getting the Online category and Illusions winning Public Choice. Hyundai made the grade in Interactive with Driveway Decision Maker, Fiat captured Print/Outdoor with its "Letters" ad, and Toyota's Tundra Endeavor Campaign spot and BMW's A Window into the Near Future were co-winners for Experiential.
You can watch all of the press release and winning videos below or check out all of the finalists, announced last month, for a refresher.