Honda Chops V-8, New NSX and Big New Acura

By High Gear Media Staff

High Gear Media Staff

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2008 Paris auto show

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Honda is dumping plans for a new line of V-8 engines, a bigger Acura flagship and a successor to the NSX sportscar.

With gas prices spasming from high to low, threats of this recession becoming a depression, and the resultant nosedive in auto sales, Honda is returning with gusto to its roots as a purveyor of efficiency. While Honda vehicles probably won't return to two cylinders and 1,100 lbs., in the past few months the automaker has drastically altered its future product plans away from heft and towards thrift.

The casualties are big ones. A planned V-8 for Acura is dead in the water, a resurrection of the exotic NSX sportscar has been scratched (it was front-engined anyway - heresy!), and even the mighty mouse S2000 roadster will not continue on. Tough times, it seems, are forcing Honda to eschew unnecessary cubic inches, high-horsepower, and feature-laden luxury sleds.

While the automaker understandably bowed to U.S. demands for tote-everything minivans (Odyssey), go-anywhere trucks (Ridgeline), and ever-increasing amounts of power and torque, they never abandoned their efficient roots. Indeed, Honda was the first to the U.S. with a mass-market, viable gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle (the first insight, launched in 2000). And while it's a mild hybrid, the current Civic hybrid still offers Honda's fuel-sipping IMA (Integrated Motor Assist) technology paired with a CVT.

But it's the 2009 Honda Insight--a new from the ground up five-door--that has everyone talking. That vehicle's success against the wildly successful Toyota Prius, also about to be launched in a new-gen flavor, will show if Honda still has its small car engineering mojo.

Our flagship site, TheCarConnection.com, will have a complete review of the 2009 Honda Insight soon. Stay tuned for more there and for more news on the 2009 Detroit auto show, too.--Colin Mathews

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