Tag: Honda

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Honda Motorsports

Ricardo Patrese gets his wife talking dirty

Ricardo Patrese, former Formula 1 driver, thought it might be a nice idea to take his wife for a nice Sunday drive. They were in a small Japanese hatchback on a quiet road with no traffic. Isn’t that nice.

Fortunately, for your viewing pleasure, Mrs Patrese wasn’t so keen on Ricardo’s driving style. Okay, so the quiet road was the Jerez circuit in Spain, and the hatchback was a Civic Type R. Of course, old racers never die, they just do it faster. I don’t speak Italian, but I know the odd swear word or two, haha.

This clip is a great laugh and the look of horror on Mrs Patrese’s face is beautifully contrasted by Ricardo’s ice cool demeanour. Enjoy!

Source: The Ricardo Patrese blog via autoblog

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Fifth Gear

Fifth Gear – Series 14, Episode 4

Apologies for the late update to this week’s show. Jason Plato—AUSmotive’s preferred Fifth Gear presenter—started the show comparing the JDM Honda Civic Mugen RR v the UK spec 2000 GT. The Japanese Civic was the quickest around their test track, and by some margin, plus it sounds bloody good, too.

I didn’t want to mention Tim Shaw this week, but given he covered the revised CO2 taxes UK residents will be paying shortly, I thought it would be worth raising, given our federal government’s recent issues with its proposed Luxury Car Tax increases. I’m guessing it won’t be long until we’re paying taxes based on emissions here in Australia too. They highlighted a Volkswagen Golf 1.6 and a Citroen C4 XS, the French car expels 13 grams less in CO2 emissions, but when the new tax laws are introduced, the Citroen will cost almost AU$200 less to register. I daren’t mention the funky and frugal MINI John Cooper Works again (6.9l/100km, 165 g/km), but, well I just did.

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Honda

Honda trumpets Jazzy fuel economy

2009 Honda Jazz

With the recent release of the MY09 Honda Jazz the Honda PR department conjured up the Urban Fuel Economy Challenge at national media launch last week. The results are now in! During the challenge, both 1.3-litre and 1.5-litre versions of the all-new Jazz returned pretty damn impressive consumption figures of just 5.1 litres/100km across a 60km drive through suburban Melbourne.

That’s better than Honda’s published ADR81/01 figures of 5.8l/100km and 6.4l/100km for the 1.3-litre manual and 1.5-litre manual respectively. Apparently the national average consumption figure for Australia’s vehicle fleet is 11.4l/100km, so naturally Honda is pretty pleased with itself, coming in under half that national figure. The 1.3-litre i-VTEC engine produces just 138gCO2/km when fitted with the manual transmission. However, you may be surprised at how those numbers stack up against another small hatch. Read on…

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Honda

What will you be driving in your 90s?

Mary Taylor, 90-year-old Honda Jazz driverHonda’s top brass couldn’t wait to trumpet this feel good story about Jazz owner Mary Taylor, a soon to be 90-year-old readying herself for her seventeenth round Australia trip. Seventeenth!

What’s more, young Mary will be singing her own tune as she plans to complete this latest journey solo. A woman after my own heart, Mary says “I’m addicted to solo driving. I love being by myself. I like to make my own decisions. Passengers always want to stop.”

Mary was 75 when she completed her maiden round Australia voyage, and in preparation for her upcoming drive she booked herself in for a thorough driving assessment. The assessor’s report card read as follows: Mary Taylor’s driving ability is of a very high standard.

Mary will document her journey with a dash-mounted video camera and her laptop, complete with voice-recognition software. She will also take photographs of her Jazz at various locations she visits. She hopes to drive as many as 600 kilometers per day and anticipates her journey along the Australian coastline will take around six weeks, covering between 16,000 to 18,000 kilometers. With precision planning, Mary travels anti-clockwise in order to save petrol and reduce her impact on the environment. “The wind pushes you along. I’ve also done the trip twice in the Civic Hybrid.”

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