Car Throttle

It's nice when enthusiasts and dealers get along. This allows events like a Honda car show at a Honda dealer to occur.  So big kudos to Crown Honda of Charlotte for hosting Carolina Honda's meet in their lot this Sunday.  It's a great venue for a show: plenty of parking, room for vendors and swap tents and a dyno, and of course so many awesome cars you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a set of titanium lug nuts. What's really cool about Honda shows is the variety of cars that show up to them.  The bulk of the aftermarket and enthusiast support for Hondas are for mid-ninties Civics (EG and EK chassis, mainly for their low weight and double-wishbone suspension) and Integras (primarily

Hard-parking - Noun.  When one owns a high-performance vehicle which he only drives to and from the garage to the car show. Used in a sentence: "Stop hard parking your car, take it out to the tracks." Hard parking is that guy you know with the sweet M3 with the sweet BBS wheels and the sweet carbon-fibre everything and the sweet AP Racing big brake kit and Tein coilovers and carbon-bucket Recaros and oh my god it's a Grouppe M carbon intake, and all he does it park it up, sparkling clean with the hood up at Euro-snob car shows.  Boo on you, pansies.  Fast cars are meant to be driven heard.  Allow me to explain.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m9Yomop92Y

A Lamborghini Countach was not equipped

There's a lot of smack-talking that occurs among the import tuning crowd. "Yo, bro, my B20/VTEC EG hatch could walk all over your H22-swapped EK hatch."  Sadly, these are not the type of discussions that can be settled on the street, because that's illegal. So local drag strips spend a lot of their weekends hosting drag racing for street cars.  This was the case the other weekend - local import speed shop Phantasm Racing hosted their first Street Wars event of the season.  As with any import drag racing event, there were some wickedly fast cars - and also some loud slow junk.  I'll be skipping the loud, slow junk and showing you a mix of pictures and video of the good stuff.

Ahh, the 90's Civic hatchback: dime a dozen, get 'em while they're hot. I know you wanted to pick a flavor, but I hope you like vanilla, 'cause that's what you'll get.  Right?  Now, normally when you look under the hood of an EG-chassis Civic (92-95), you see one these: a D15. Boring.  On a good day, a single-cam D15 16v PGM-FI motor will make 110 or so horsepower.  Which is perfectly adequate for a 2,400lb commuter car, and it'll deliver 40+ MPG on the highway all day long.  But if you want to go fast in your Civic Hatch, you're going to need a bigger motor.  How about one that doesn't even fit under the hood? Wait, WHAT? No, this photo isn't photoshopped.  That's an

Some would call it unfortunately styled.  I'm not that polite.  I call it a Butterface. I'm talking about the Acura TL, man, not Ke$ha.  Butterface, for those not well-versed in rude jargon, means "nice body - but 'er face is ugly."  Crude, I know.  But it describes the current TL pretty well, when you think about it.  The TL's got a nice interior, it's got great engines and powertrain selections, it's reasonably priced, dead reliable, and it even looks good from the side and from the back!  But when you get around to the front end... well, it's horrendous.  For reference, this is a picture of the current TL's front end. Yuck!  What's up with that buck tooth?  Well, Acura called it a "power plenum"

The Honda Civic Si has been a shoestring-budget enthusiast favorite for a long time. But it's hard to deny that it's been standing pat while it's competitors have been charging past it - sometimes at a way faster rate of speed.  Budget rockets like the MazdaSpeed3, Lancer Ralliart, and Subaru WRX have sucked down a lungful of turbo boost and proceeded to blow the Si's doors off.  Even though the current Si is a hoot to drive, it's a bit embarassing that a V6 Mustang will blow it's doors off.  Enter the rumormill: when the refreshed 2012 Civic Si hits dealer lots, it's going to have a new engine under the hood. Now, that's not to say the current Si's motor is a dud.  Far from

The Chicago Auto Show is coming next month, and while the show doesn't usually see a ton of major introductions, Acura is confirming a new launch for the show. Historically, the TL has been a hot-seller for Acura and overall in the United States luxury market. The redesigned model for 2009 has seen things stagnate however, with a styling language that (understandably) hasn't resonated well with consumers. It still ranks as the brand's second-best selling model however, making it an important part of the brand's portfolio. A "newly refined" model is set to debut on February 9, 2011, introduced by Jeff Conrad, vice president of Acura's sales. The new car most likely will offer a big hint if Acura is going to really move

Cadillac and Infiniti have been increasingly aiming for their German competition as of late. The CTS and M, as mid-size models, are both crucial to each of their respective manufacturers in achieving that goal. Safety is a highly important aspect for customers when purchasing a new vehicle, and all luxury manufacturers aim to score well (and usually do). The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has announced that the Cadillac CTS and Infiniti M are Top Picks for 2010. This in particular is a pretty impressive new entry for Infiniti, showing the brand has really advanced in the area of safety. The CTS has been picked for this award before, showing continued excellence. The Top Pick status comes after passing new, more stringent roof testing standards. The CTS

Acura just rolled out the new 2011 Acura TSX Sport Wagon at this year's New York Auto Show. They are going to sell this ride in America, and I don't see anything wrong with that. What I do see as being a bump in the road is whether American's will buy it or not. One of the things that I like about cars and driving and people's attitude towards cars in Europe, is that they can do something like make a super-fast very elegant station wagons. Think of Audi's Avants and such like. Americans, on the other hand, don't like station wagons very much. They have a stigma over here. They are seen as being a rung below minivans, and minivans are a rung below SUVs,

Test vehicle: 2010 Acura MDX 3.7L V6 with 6-speed automatic transmission One of the trends from the past decade has no doubt been luxury SUVs. Even Porsche dived head first into the market with the Cayenne, with Acura has releasing its competitor into the marketplace - the three-row Acura MDX SUV. Since its introduction it has been critically acclaimed, being Car and Driver's Best Luxury SUV in 2005 and winning Motor Trend's Sport/Utility of the Year Award in 2005, in addition to coming out on top in many other comparison tests. The MDX was fully redesigned in 2007 and received a Mid-Cycle Enhancement (MCE) for the 2010 model year. Is it everything it is cracked up to be? To find out the answer, CarThrottle tested the MDX for a week,