EchoBooming in Birmingham

A day of big letdowns in my opinion. I’ll start off with the highlights.

Biggest potential

Honda’s got a Turbo Engine. Yay!
It’s got AWD. Yay!
It’s a small SUV. ~eh~
It only comes in with an Auto. Boooooo!

The new mini ute from Acura is called the RDX. Sharing a platform with the Element and CRV, the RDX is sure to be a hot seller for Acura but the big news here is the engine.

The 2.4L Turbo puts out 240HP and 260lb/ft of torque (the only time I can remember a Honda engine having more torque than HP) and it’s a K series engine (the same basic engine block that is in many other Honda and Acura autos). The potential here is huge. If Honda can roll out a manual transmission to mate this engine to it’s SH-AWD system, it will pwn the sport compact and sport sedan segments. Even with out SH-AWD, this engine would rocket Honda into the lead of the sport compact HP wars (currently being won by the Dodge SRT-4 and the Chevrolet Cobalt SS Supercharged).
Honda, if you put this engine, SH-AWD, and a manual transmission in to the next TL, I’d be in heaven.

Biggest tiny car

Volvo is bringing a new entry level car to the US market in the form of the C30. It is built on the same platform as the S40 and V50, but it comes in 2 door form. In fact it is nearly an exact copy of the European Ford Focus (which also shares the platform along with the Mazda3).
It should bring a younger demographic to Volvo, along with more sales.
I’m not sure I follow Ford’s logic when it comes to refusing to bring the latest version of the Focus, and instead re-skining the old Focus for the North American market. One would think that a Ford version of the car would sell many more copies than a Volvo version (that will undoubtedly be more expensive).

Let downs to come later…