Honda Gives You Wings

YOU might be more familiar with its cars and motorcycles, but did you know that Honda also made planes? If boat engines and quad bikes weren’t enough to keep the Japanese firm occupied, it recently embarked on a project to manufacture high-end business jets. With a base in America and more than a decade of research under its belt plus a small fleet of development aircraft, the company has announced that its first customer specification model is almost ready to fly.

Consumer Reports: No to Chevrolet SUV, Ford crossovers, MyFord Touch

Consumer Reports said Monday it will not recommend the Chevrolet Tahoe SUV and Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX crossovers because of low scores in the magazine's tests, and panned Ford Motor Co.'s MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch technology. The magazine also said it will not recommend the Infiniti QX56, a V8 version of the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Porsche Cayenne. Those SUVs performed well in testing but were too new for the magazine to have adequate reliability data to recommend, it said.

College Exhibition: IED Degree Show 2007

The Istituto Europeo di Design of Turin (IED) teamed up with Toyota to create "Prius of 2010-2015", the third year project of 26 students in the post-graduate Transportation Design Course. Led by Fulvio Fantolino, IED's Transportation Design Course Coordinator and followed in the various design stages by Elvio D'Aprile, Assistant Chief Designer at Toyota Europe Design Development, and by Tateo Uchida, General Director Research and Project Forum, the task to come up with concepts that, in addition to heightening the technological excellence, could stress the emotional element, an essential characteristic to conquer the European and world market. In all, ten projects were created and submitted to Toyota as the students' final thesis projects, showcasing a variety of different proposals for future ecological hybrid vehicles.