2009 Honda Fit to make New York show debut
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The 2009 Honda Fit is making its debut in U.S.-spec trim at the New York auto show in March. Sales of the current-generation Fit have been limited in some areas only by how fast the subcompact five-door can be made. The new car, which made its world debut at last year's Tokyo Motor Show, is built on a longer wheelbase than the current model, which has only been in U.S. Honda dealerships for two model years. The 2009 Fit is expected to hit U.S. showrooms shortly after its debut at New York.
The new Fit (known as the Jazz elsewhere in the world) is available in Japanese trim with a 100-horsepower, 1.3-liter base engine as well as a 1.5-liter four pushing about 118 horspower. We'll likely only get the 1.5-liter option, which is reportedly capable of an impressive 40-plus MPG. A rotating front passenger seat and a CVT may also be available.
Stay tuned to MotorTrend.com for all your Geneva show updates March 4-5 and New York show updates March 19-20.
Can China help make Buick cool?
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Here's an intriguing insight GM design chief Ed Welburn (pictured, center) let slip at lunch today: When many of GM's young designers start playing around with design concept sketches, a lot of them end up as Buicks. Not Corvettes. Not Caddys. Not Chevy trucks. Buicks.
Yeah, I was surprised, too. Enclave aside, Buick is now the old man's brand in the GM domestic portfolio. Slightly sharper new threads can't disguise the fact the Lucerne and LaCrosse are basically hangovers from the numb, wallowy, indifferent mush GM car plants churned for much of the past two decades.
So what is it about Buick? Welburn, a lifelong Buick fan (his father had a Bill Mitchell-era Riviera), thinks it's because of Buick's storied design heritage. After dross like recent LeSabres, Regals, Centurys, it's easy to forget that GM's first concept car, the Y-Job, was a Buick styled by Harley Earl, or that Bill Mitchell's 1963 Riv was one of the absolute high watermarks of 1960s auto design. Period.
Welburn could be right. But what's more interesting -- and, I suspect, what really has GM's hot young designers juiced -- is the way Buick is morphing into something completely unrelated to its past.
As we reported earlier today, GM will unveil a sedan concept at the Beijing show in a few weeks' time. It will be called Invicta and will likely hint at the forthcoming 2010 Lacrosse replacement, a car known internally as GMX353 and built off the next generation Epsilon 2 architecture.
The Invicta follows last year's Riviera concept, one of the stars of the Shanghai show, and like the Riviera, was largely styled in GM's Shanghai studio. Buick is GM's hero brand in China, accounting for about one-third of the million or so GM vehicles the company sells there. That explains the Shanghai styling connection: Buick's future depends on designing cars that primarily appeal to consumers in what will soon be the world's largest auto market.
Buick is morphing into the world's first Chinese-American brand. And wouldn't it be ironic if Shanghai's sharp new Buicks helped make one of America's iconic auto nameplates cool again?
2009 Acura TSX to bow at upcoming New York auto show
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Acura has made it official: Its next-generation 2009 Acura TSX sedan will make its world debut at March's New York auto show. Based largely on the upcoming European Honda Accord which is scheduled to be unveiled a couple of weeks before at the Geneva Motor Show, the TSX is expected to be the first Honda to come with the automaker's new, much-hyped, i-DTEC clean diesel engine. The TSX will hit dealer showrooms in the spring, shortly after its New York debut.
No other information is available as of yet on the new car, but it is clearly sporting a version of the "Dynamic Power Plenum" grille that debuted to grave reviews recently on the new RL that was just shown at the Chicago auto show. At first glance, the application on the TSX is a bit more palatable then the version on Acura's flagship. Other than the new grille, the vehicle's exterior styling looks to be more of an evolutionary update. Stay tuned to MotorTrend.com for all your auto show news from Geneva and New York, with complete details on the TSX coming on March
