Honda

With all the excitement about electric vehicles these days, the natural gas Honda Civic GX just doesn’t get any respect. Perhaps that’s because it still burns fossil fuel in an internal combustion engine, which may seem to some like incremental innovation. But a closer look at the car, which debuted in 1998 and has sold several thousand since then, reveals an interesting story about the cleanest internal combustion vehicle in the United States.

The Civic GX program was born of an era when the enemy was smog emissions and air quality, not global warming.

Honda's 2010 Accord Crosstour doesn't yet appear on the Japanese automaker's accessories site, but a few images of aftermarket bits have been shared with an Element owner's forum (viewable below), and we now have some live shots straight from the show floor at SEMA.

Honda CR-Z - Click above for high-res image gallery

While the idea of a performance-tuned hybrid may have seemed nonsensical only a couple of years ago, as the earth-friendly vehicles become more mainstream, the sub-segment will undoubtedly grow to attract a fair share of our attention. Case in point: reports from overseas indicate that Mugen is seriously toying with the idea of creating a high-performance version of the upcoming Honda CR-Z.

Oh please please please let this be true. Honda CEO Takanobu Ito says the company is planning on building a “green” sports car that is affordable, noting the car “would be environmentally friendly and have great performance.” And then he took a huge swipe at the Lexus LFA supercar unveiled at the Tokyo Auto Show.

“Sure, there are folks who like that ‘vroom’ of the engine out of nostalgia,” he told Automotive News. “But those people are stuck in the past. The era of V-10 engines is gone.”

Oh snap!

There's no doubt about which automaker leads the hybrid vehicle race. Toyota - and particularly the Japanese automaker's Prius hybrid - outsells all other manufacturers combined. In total, Automotive News calculates that Toyota sold 144,351 hybrid vehicles in the first nine months of 2009, which actually represents a 28-percent drop from the previous year.

Gone are the days when the biggest complaint people had about the Toyota Prius was its unusual styling. Now that Toyota’s sold more than one million of the eco-wonders and they’re seen everywhere from Kumamoto, Japan to one-stop-sign towns in Kansas, the complaints have become more benign. “It doesn’t meet the EPA ratings” or “It’s too slow” are the most common complaints you’ll hear these days.

Don’t worry, though. Now we’ve got the BMW X6 and Honda Accord Crosstour to kick around.

Finally, after what seems like years of rumor, innuendo, spy shots and speculation, Honda has unleashed the goods on its new 2010 VFR 1200F, and it's pretty much what we've been expecting. Buried beneath the dual-pane bodywork and vacuum-molded cast aluminum chassis lies a 1,237 cc V4 engine that reportedly puts out 172 hp at 10,000 RPM and 95 lb-ft of torque at a high 8,750 RPM.

Honda has offered a sneak preview of the CR-Z hybrid, which is debuting amongst a slew of alt-fuel concepts at the 41st annual Tokyo Motor Show.

Apparently, those with graying temples are attracted to cars that automakers had originally intended for younger audiences. This trend was most recently noticed with Honda Element and Scion xB, which featured heavily youth-slanted marketing schemes but were often purchased by those with a bit more experience under their belts.