Temple of VTEC Rumors and News - Rumor Mill Update from Japan

Back in the early days of the TOV Rumors and News section, a staple of our coverage was a bimonthly update from Mike Freitas, a serviceman who was stationed in Japan. Unfortunately once Mike retired from the military and moved back to the US, we lost our steady source of JDM gossip. These Japanese auto mags are always entertaining with their (sometimes) outlandish predictions and computer generated renderings and photoshops. It's like reading celebrity tabloids, only the subjects are future cars rather than the Jessicas (Alba and Simpson) and Paris Hilton.

Anyhow, Daniel Garcia (TOV's European Editor) has relocated to Tokyo recently and has been adding Japanese to his lengthy list of language skills. I just received this report from him:

HI Jeff,

I don�t know if this is worthy to be published in the rumours and news section, but just to let you know.

Basically, I was reading some JP auto mags today after work and I found quite a few talking about future Honda�s (including drawings and renders)

- I found 2 or 3 stating that there will be a 4 door Civic TypeR with a slightly more tuned version of the Civic Si Sedan engine at around 215 � 220ps. Some mags call it Civic RS. All of them show in their images the Civic Sedan Si Concept from Chicago, and state that their R version would be quite similar to it.

- I�ve found quite a few ones claiming that there will be a sports coupe (some call it Integra, some not) powered by a 280 � 300 ps version of the 2.3L turbo engine found on the RDX. Some also say that this engine will be on a new Accord EuroR that would look very similar to the Sports4 concept of Tokyo and have SH-AWD.

- Rumours about a luxury sports coupe, with images quite close to an RL coupe, and possibly an engine bigger than a V6 on it.

They also have some nice NSX renders I�ve never seen before� but I�m not sure they have any basis.

Finally, some non-Honda rumours, but still surprising.

- They all say that there will be soon an IS500. That beast is supposed to have a 5.0L V8 engine with 420PS at only 5800 rpm (maybe this is no news to you). Style wise, it looks really BMWish to me, with even the lateral stuff from the M series..

- Quite strange, but I found a scoop about a new MR-2 with a 3.3L V6 engine�

- Finally, a new high performance Nissan coupe, kind of extreme Infinity G35, boosting a highly tuned 4.5L V8 engine.

Well, that�s more or less all of it, don�t know if it�s of any use though,

Regards,

Daniel

I've asked Daniel to continue tracking the rumour mill in Japan so we will hopefully have a semi-regular update coming in from him on that front. I've also asked if he can get a few scans so we can see what these sketches look like. I will add them later if he can supply them.

While we can't fully comment on the validity of all these Honda rumours, I can say that the information on the Civic Sedan (Type R or RS) coincides with stuff that we've been hearing from well placed sources for the past 12-18months. The Accord Sports4 information also has some credibility, though the sports coupe is one of those things that we've heard a little bit about but we've been unable to nail anything down on it yet. The RL-based coupe stuff is similar in that the idea's been out there for a while but we haven't seen much beyond the speculative buzz of these sorts of magazines. The credibility rating assigned for this information is based upon the JDM Civic Type R/RS info. The other items fall below that.