{"id":404121,"date":"2010-03-08T16:03:04","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T21:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.egmcartech.com\/?p=52599"},"modified":"2010-03-08T16:03:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T21:03:04","slug":"the-honda-cr-z-almost-didn%e2%80%99t-make-it-u-s-bosses-didn%e2%80%99t-want-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/404121","title":{"rendered":"The Honda CR-Z almost didn\u2019t make it, U.S. bosses didn\u2019t want it"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The 2011 Honda CR-Z is ready to go on sale later this year, however, the sporty hybrid is a car that nearly wasn’t, according to a report by Automotive News<\/em>. The two-seater hatchback was almost dropped because engineers weren’t convinced it was unique and because U.S. bosses originally didn’t want the car in their showrooms.<\/p>\n

A man by the name of Norio Tomboe was appointed chief engineer of the project in the summer of 2004 and he says the early working models had a traditional gasoline engine.<\/p>\n

“We had serious doubts about whether this would bring new value,” Tomobe said. “I really struggled for a new idea, and we decided to start over from scratch. The hybrid finally gave us the wow factor.”<\/p>\n

He said that going hybrid was the only problem and admits that at least one thing he wishes the CR-Z had: “more horsepower.”<\/p>\n

Tomobe said he would like a Type R sporty version of the CR-Z someday with a more performance-tuned power-to-weight ratio.<\/p>\n

Refresher<\/strong>: The 2011 Honda CR-Z is powered by a 1.5L i-VTEC mated to Honda\u2019s Integrated Motor Assist hybrid system. It produces a total of 122-hp and a maximum torque of 128 lb-ft when mated to manual transmission (123 lb-ft for CVT models). Fuel-economy is estimated at 31\/37 mpg (city\/highway) for the manual model and 36\/38 mpg for the CVT model. Sales begin in the second half of 2010.<\/p>\n

2010 Detroit: 2011 Honda CR-Z<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\"2010<\/a> \"2010<\/a> \"2010<\/a> \"2010<\/a><\/p>\n

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– By: Kap Shah<\/em><\/p>\n

Source: Automotive News<\/a> (Subscription Required)<\/p>\n

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The 2011 Honda CR-Z is ready to go on sale later this year, however, the sporty hybrid is a car that nearly wasn’t, according to a report by Automotive News. The two-seater hatchback was almost dropped because engineers weren’t convinced it was unique and because U.S. bosses originally didn’t want the car in their showrooms. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}