Though they came out at roughly the same time, Honda's "mild" hybrid, the Insight, never took off in the way that Toyota's Prius did. (Then again, given that the Prius remains the pre-eminent hybrid vehicle on the planet, how could it have?) Since the Insight, though, Honda has largely remained on the sidelines as other major automakers moved forward with plug-in hybrids and battery-powered vehicles. Today, Honda announced its medium-term strategy to sell both a battery-electric and a plug-in hybrid in the U.S. and Japanese markets in 2012. (The plans also call for a Europe-only small diesel model in the same year.) 

The car sales world has changed significantly in the last few years. Whereas manufacturers once resorted to all kinds of tricks and gimmicks to inflate numbers from one area to the next, the public, the motoring press and the government have all started paying quite a bit more attention to how car companies move their products. While that has a lot to do with the fact that the American taxpayer was gracious enough to bail out both Chrysler and General Motors, it also means that both companies are now focusing on improving their products to boost sales instead of relying on incentives and fleet numbers.

Or at least that was the trend for most of 2010. 

When it comes to the recent proliferation of car-based sport utilities, also known as crossovers or CUVs, the Ford Explorer hasn't quite lived up to its trail-blazing name: The once-king of truck-based SUVs has been reluctant to give up its crown and live in another kingdom -- until now.

The news that the Explorer is moving to a car-based platform -- specifically, the same platform on which the Lincoln MKS sedan, Ford Taurus sedan and Ford Flex crossover are based -- is hardly new. The big news today, though, is the extent to which the once-heavy SUV has lightened up. Ford said today that the upcoming Explorer equipped with the optional two-liter EcoBoost I4 engine (the other option is a V6) will be 30 percent more fuel-efficient than the current V6-equipped Explorer. That puts the smaller Explorer in the range of 18 mpg city/26 mpg highway. 

It's called the automotive right-to-repair law, and if it passes the House in Massachusetts (it's already through the Senate) it would be the first of its kind, anywhere.

The crux of the bill is this: Groups, reportedly led by smaller, mom-and-pop repair shops, are pushing for manufacturers to provide -- for a price -- the same diagnostic and software information that they make available to dealerships, critical components of which are commonly withheld from local car repair shops (which are often forced to bring the vehicle to the dealership for critical repairs at extra cost). By doing so, it's argued, customers would have free rein to choose their repair shops for any and all issues with their vehicle while keeping costs down and reducing the time their car is in the shop. 

Ford Racing and Team O'Neil Rally School (subject of this Exhaust Notes post from Lawrence Ulrich) have joined forces to teach interested drivers how to rally in a Ford Fiesta.

Ford has donated 43 of its much-hyped new small car to the school, which will be used in skid pad and slalom courses after a classroom session that goes over vehicle dynamics and car control. Skills such as left-foot braking are taught, of course, as are more advanced techniques such as the Scandinavian flick, also known as the pendulum turn -- a counterintuitive maneuver that uses induced oversteer to create a slingshot effect around a corner. All students get a blast through a rally stage, with the best students left to navigate the course themselves. 

As anyone who lives in Detroit can tell you, the automotive world has changed. But despite the recent near-death experiences of both General Motors and Chrysler, some Monday-morning quarterbacks still believe that these companies could have carried on in the same dysfunctional manner, and somehow everything would have turned out OK.

As The New York Times reported, a special inspector’s report for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of the Treasury Department suggests that President Barack Obama’s automotive task force moved too quickly to force GM and Chrysler to thin their bloated dealership ranks.

 

Tens of thousands of dealership jobs were lost as a result, as the report noted. But while anyone can feel sympathy for dealers forced to close their doors, I prefer to focus on the hundreds of thousands of jobs that were saved: GM expects to report a full-year profit this year, and Chrysler either this year or next. The companies -- of which bailout critics were saying “let 'em burn” not long ago -- not only survived, but may be poised to thrive. But that’s happening only because Detroit was dragged, kicking and screaming, to do what it had resisted doing for decades: make tough choices and bring their costs in line to compete against Japan, Europe and South Korea.

 

Hard to believe, but the Mazda Miata is 20 years old. And Mazda didn't let the birthday pass without a party.

On July 17, parked in the inner courtyard of Mazda R&D in Irvine, Calif., were examples of every significant Miata and MX-5 Miata ever made. There were pristine first-, second- and third-generation cars as well as a number of racing Miatas and a couple of concept cars. The beautiful red Monoposto sat next to the gold, fixed-roof M Coupe, and that one was next to a 1995 M Speedster (the latter reminding us that there have been so many special- edition Miatas that the regular production cars should be worth more than the special editions when these things enter the collector-car market, though that may be unlikely given that most owners don't want to quit driving them).

 

Say what you want about its product, but Red Bull knows how to put a freaking cool racing video together (case in point: Travis Pastrana's record-breaking New Year's Eve rally car jump).

Now it's released one of my favorites to date: Rhys Millen's run in his specialized Hyundai to the top of Pikes Peak. Weather and a new car conspired to bump Millen to third ("Monster" Tajima took first yet again) and keep the notorious 10-minute mark intact, but Millen had a good run in an exciting car, and I'm already counting down the days until next year's Race to the Clouds.

Check out the video, after the jump.