Honda has had a long legacy in racing, from its early days racing motorcycles to its recent success as an engine supplier to other top-teir racing teams. However, last year Honda ended it’s relatively short-lived F1 team under cost-cutting pressures brought on by the larger downturn in the automotive industry.

Now, Honda has taken that team of 400 engineers and put them back to work squeezing every last ounce of efficiency out of their passenger vehicles. As investment fund manager Masayuki Kubota told Bloomberg:

“Automakers that are able to spare their resources for advanced and environmental technologies will eventually become the winners at a time when one breakthrough technology will make a huge difference.”

In recent years, Honda has made a name for it’s by rejecting may of the current trends in environmental engineering like plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Instead, Honda has been working hard on perfecting it’s market-leading fuel cell technology and redoubling efforts to improve the internal combustion engine (ICE).

Most companies act as if they have given up on the ICE, but according to Honda the ICE will remain the dominant form of propulsion for the next several decades. Even if Japan, America, and Europe phase out the ICE relatively quickly, emerging markets in India and China will rely on cheaper ICE technology for decades to come, making efficiency gains important to a long-term, global approach.

Honda has clearly put most of their eggs in the ICE basket and only time will tell if it pays off. Either way, Honda is certainly putting its best foot forward in accomplishing its goal.

The Cannonball run was one of those things I grew up wishing I could do, but knowing I never would. Well, now that I’m all grown up, it doesn’t seem like it matters anyway, because the Cannonball run isn’t done in the US anymore. Luckily, for entertainment’s sake, it’s still on in Europe, and this year there were some pretty interesting results.

This year’s winner was, somewhat suprisingly, a BRABUS-modified Smart car. The BRABUS package definitely gives the Smart a kick in the pants, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as some of the cars you’d expect to see. However, the European site does point out that “it’s not what you drive, but how you drive it.”

How did the Smart capture the glory?

Even though the other cars in the race were much faster, the Smart made the trek at an average of 61 mph by cutting down on stops. As one of the driver’s states, it was the car’s fuel economy and not its speed that allowed it to win the iconic endurance race:

The downfall of the bigger cars was that they were forced to stop so often, so while they kept overtaking us, we eventually went past them at the next petrol station when they needed to fill up again,” said David…. “We kept at a decent speed and still averaged around 35 miles per gallon.”

I can sympathize with this, as I often find myself passed by speeders on long road trips, only to pass them again as they fill up while I can cruise up to 700 miles on a single tank. Given the Smart’s success this year, I wonder if we’ll begin to see more people competing in fuel efficient cars in future Cannonball runs. I guess time will tell!

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