[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by wdb

There are engines in which the valves and the pistons never touch, even if the valves are wide open when the pistons reach top dead center. If a valvetrain failure were to occur on one of these engines, no valves would be bent nor pistons damaged.

Then there are engines where the valves and pistons occupy the same space at (hopefully) different times. In these engines, valvetrain failure can result in bent and dented stuff.

Interference engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You're quite right about interference engines being much more common than just Honda. Lots of manufacturers build them.

True. Pre-WW2 engines used to have side valves, long stroke and low compressiion; or valves that open outward.
There are some other systems using revolving disks with a hole and such, and there are two-stroke, Wankel and turbine engines that don't use valves at all.

For max efficiency we need a short(ish) stroke and rather high compression. That leaves little space in the top end of the combustion chamber. It is also best to have the valves open inside the chamber, so that's why the interference type is more common than all the other types combined, at least for car engines.

It is quite telling to see what happens if you search fro non-interference engine on Wikipedia. There is no page for that. Instead, it redirects to the page for the interference engine.
The Wikipedia interference search engine...!