Honda's Del Sol Targa

I'm not an automobile racing buff.  Well, I did follow Formula 1 in the pages of Road & Track in the days when the cars sported national racing colors and not scads of product decals.  So please try to excuse me if I have trouble connecting the famed Targa Florio road races in Sicily with a car body style.

Actually, it seems that in 1966 Porsche first marketed a 911 convertible featuring a fixed roll-bar combined with a rear window where the open-air zone was directly above the driver and passenger seats.  The Porsche Targa name was taken from the race where presumably Porsches competed in its postwar iteration.  Actual classical (pre- Word War 2) Targa Florio racers never had such appendages.  Not even roll bars.

The comparative marketing success of the original Porsche Targa and the circa-1970 Porsche 914 (where Targa top was integral to the design and not an add-on) has led to later Targa applications. One of these was the Honda Del Sol (Wikikpedia entry here) using a Honda Civic platform.

The Del Sol was produced 1992-97 in Japan and first sold in the USA for 1993 model year.  It was moderately successful in America, the link stating that total sales were a little more than 75,000 -- an average of about 15,000 per year.  The car's un-aggressive styling soon led to its reputation as a chick-car (an automobile more appealing to women than men), and this might have affected sales.

All that aside, the Del Sol was pleasingly styled, and in the spirit of the new, aerodynamic styling trend that began in the 1980s.  It is certainly far removed from the busy, angular ornamentation Honda and most other brands are featuring nowadays.

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The Porsche 914 was an early successful affordable sporty car with the Targa feature.  Its motor was located between the passenger compartment and the rear axle line.  Del Sol engines were at the front, leading to better proportions than 914s had.

The Honda Del Sol.

Clean styling, but not distinctive if the Targa feature is ignored.

Showing the top in place.

Frontal view of a right-hand drive Japanese market version.

The same car with the top in place.  The tail light ensemble is not well-integrated with the surrounding folds and cut lines.

Honda Finally Gets the CR-V Right

A while ago I wrote about the side window designs of recent Honda CR-V SUV models.  I was not happy.

I concluded, stating: "I'm hoping the Honda stylists will come to their senses and find a more attractive side-window profile when the fifth-generation CR-V comes along."

And voila! They actually did.

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The first-generation CR-Vs appeared in the USA for the 1997 model year.  Window treatment was basic station wagon (break) style.

Second-generation CR-Vs arrived for 2002.  A wee bit of rear overhang was added and the C-pillar received the merest whiff of a dog-leg treatment.  Nothing objectionable as yet.  (These first two images are "for sale" photos, the others look like they came from Honda.)

But for the 2007 third-generation, there is trouble.  The drooping upper window profile clashes with the profile of the vehicle's top.  That design was suited for sedans, not SUVs.

Honda's 2012 redesign corrected some of the problem just mentioned, but the window treatment remains better suited for sedans.

Here is a photo of a 2017 CR-V.  As of late October when I drafted this, I couldn't find one showing the left side view, so this will have to do.  At long last the upper window profile and the roof profile are in sync.  The side of the tail light assembly clashes with the rest of the C-pillar treatment, so Honda stylists still have a little more work to do.

Honda's Prettiest Preludes

Honda's Prelude was a sporty line produced 1978-2001.  A Wikipedia entry about Preludes is here.  That article mentions that there were five generations of Preludes.  The second (1983-87) and third (1988-91) generation Preludes are those that interest me.

Those Preludes were very attractive coupés in an angular variation of the so-called "three-box" style.  Besides having distinct, nearly flat body surfaces, these cars had plenty of glass area -- their greenhouses being a little less than 40 percent of their total body height.

The overall visual effect of these Preludes was that of lightness and grace, something lacking in prior and later generation Preludes.

Second and third generation Preludes have a very similar appearance, even though the third generation cars were slightly longer and details differed subtly.  In the paired mages below, second generation Preludes are shown first, third generation cars below.

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The second generation Prelude has a character line running near the top of the fender, and the third generation Prelude lacks this.

Third generation Preludes have lower hoods.  They also lack a grille above the bumper, though below-bumper treatment is similar for both cars.  The third generation car's appearance is cleaner from this point of view.

The third generation car has a slightly longer greenhouse.  Also, the windshield and backlight are raked a bit more.  Differences in hood height are also apparent, the third generation car having a more pointed nose.

The main difference in these rear quarter views is the subtle spoiler-like sculpting around the top of the trunk.  C-pillars are thinner, making the greenhouse even airier.

Fastback SUVs: Honda Gives Up, Germans Try It

I have no problem with creative thinking in the automobile industry.  Of course, many creative car concepts aren't very successful.   Consider crossover SUVs with fastback styling.

The SUV (Sport-Utility Vehicle) in its crossover (sedan-based, as opposed to truck-based) form is essentially a Station Wagon (or Break, as it is called in some countries).  Moreover, it is a station wagon with a tall body where the driver and passengers are higher off the road than would be the case in a standard sedan or conventional station wagon.  But a fastback body profile negates the station wagon aspect of the accepted SUV concept, a potentially risky marketing move.

Honda's fastback crossover SUV Crosstour (first marketed as a Honda Accord) was launched in the USA for the 2010 model year and withdrawn from the market after the 2015 model year due to poor sales.  Presumably what potential buyers were seeing was a fat sedan with less carrying capacity than an equivalent SUV.

I should mention that in practice, SUV luggage areas are seldom loaded to the point where rear-view vision is obstructed.  That suggests that the Crosstour was probably as practical a hauler as a conventional SUV -- most of the time.  But not all of the time, and that might have been the design factor that reduced potential sales.

Even though it was known that the Crosstour was not a market success, for some reason BMW designed and launched its X4, a slightly smaller version of the Crosstour for the 2015 model year as did Mercedes with its GLE Coupe.  The Honda and BMW have about the same wheelbase -- 110.1 inches (2797 mm) for the Crosstour and 110.6 inches (2810 mm) for the X4, while the GLE is longer at 114.8 inches (1916 mm).  But the Crosstour's length was 195.8 inches (4973 mm) compared to the X4s 183.9 inches (4671 mm), a difference of about a foot (30 cm).  The GLE's length is nearly that of the Crosstour, 192.6 inches (4892mm).

It will be interesting to find out if the X4 and GLE Coupe do better in the American market than the Crosstour did.  So far, I have seen few of these on the streets and highways.

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Seen from the front, the X4 (central image) is stubbier, less graceful then the Crosstour (upper image).  The relationship of the GLE Coupe (lower image) to the Crosstour is similar.

Profile views show that the Crosstour has greater hauling capacity than the X4 thanks to its greater rear overhang.  The GLE also has short rear overhang and, considering the relationship of the rear doors to the wheel openings, less trunk room when the rear seatback is upright.

All of these cars seem more like four-door hatchback (5-door) sedans than crossover SUVs of any kind.

Additional comparative views of the storage zones of the Crosstour and X4.

First-Generation Honda and Toyota Hybrid Cars

Hybrid cars have been sold in the American market for around 15 years now.  Many such cars are difficult to detect because, aside from a small badge, they look the same as equivalent conventionally-powered models.

The first hybrids were different-looking, something like the current crop of electrically powered cars.  And the two earliest hybrid entries in the USA -- the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight -- are still being sold and still have their own styling themes.  One change is that the initial Prius and Insight models have been replaced by new designs.

In this post, I present the initial Priuses and Insights along with the usual commentary.  For background on the first Prius, click here, and for the Insight, go here.

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Australian market version Prius shown here.  It has small wheels on a short (100.4 in, 2550 mm) wheelbase along with a short, stubby nose.  From the cowling back, the design is in line with small sedan styling conventions of the the mid-1990s.  The Prius redesign used a longer (106.3 in, 2700 mm) wheelbase and a body derived from extensive wind tunnel testing.

For me, the problem with the initial Prius design is that the front and the rest of the car are poorly integrated.  The main culprit is the curved character line above the front wheel opening: it shouldn't be curved.  I would have extended it forward to touch the headlamp ensemble, splitting the latter so that the part above the contact point would be an amber color turn signal.  Something like this would have related the front to the rest of the car.

The Prius rear is bland, but not ugly.  The car cries out for larger wheels, but engineers probably insisted on small ones as a weight-saving measure.

The first Honda Insight had a very short wheelbase (94 in, 2400 mm) and held only the driver and a passenger.  The design was clearly influenced by wind tunnel testing -- note the covered rear wheels, among other details.  Like the Prius, wheels are aesthetically too small.

The Insight had a much better-integrated design, though the area in the vicinity of the top of the front wheel opening is a bit confusing.  Fortunately the curves, folds and cut lines are subtle, thereby limiting the damage.

Both the Insight and Prius (to a lesser extent) designs have strong folds on the sides towards the rear.  In both cases the objective was to have a usefully wide axle line while having the upper part of the aft body taper slightly inwards for aerodynamic reasons.