| Launch Report Honda Accord i-CTDi |
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At Long Last Honda may be the biggest engine manufacturer in the world - turning out more than ten million every year, if you take the car, motor-cycle and power products divisions into account - but its attitude to diesel engines used to be that they were crude, noisy, dirty, smelly and altogether unworthy of being mentioned in polite society. Even now, Honda Japan and Honda America want nothing to do with them, but there's a different commercial imperative in the UK and European markets. Here, any mainstream company without a turbo diesel in its catalogue is just asking for trouble, considering what an increasing number of customers these engines attract, and how important in the fleet and company car market it is to have a Euro IV compliant diesel engine. Honda made its first move by buying in Isuzu turbo diesel engines for the Civic, but that must have been pretty tough to do for a company which builds such excellent petrol engines of its own - powerful, smooth, well balanced and assembled to the finest of tolerances.
Producing its first diesel engine wasn't a matter of Honda simply pinching ideas from rivals who had got there first. There's a lot of fresh thinking here. Second-generation common rail, of course, but also an unusually light all-aluminium construction with Honda's own method of casting. As well as designing the new power unit in the first instance to be as quiet-running as possible, Honda has given the Accord a dedicated diesel engine mounting system plus extra acoustic protection above and below the engine compartment, and in the front bulkhead. |
Until quite recently, if you asked a Honda engineer when the company might start building diesels, he wouldn't quite clutch his throat and fall over sideways while making retching noises, but you had the impression that only good manners prevented him from doing something of the kind.
