Brows­ing the local blo­gos­phere (PaulTan.org to be exact) we were sur­prised to hear news that the pre­vi­ously announced Sub­aru Tur­bod­iesel Boxer engine has been on show at Frank­furt. The new motor is the first of it’s kind, a hor­i­zon­tally opposed turbo diesel four cylin­der engine, and we expect it’ll be in a vari­ant of the new Impreza, and per­haps the local Lib­erty in the future.

Power comes in at 110KW (147HP), which is on par with the nat­u­rally aspi­rated 2.0L petrol engine. Torque comes in with a meaty 350Nm of torque. The engine is 2.0L in capacity.

There’s no men­tion of fuel effi­ciency, but you can expect it to be good, even bet­ter than the petrol N/​A. With that much torque, you could almost use an hypo­thet­i­cal tur­bod­iesel Boxer Impreza as a tow car.

At this years Frank­furt Motor­show, Honda hasn’t been rest­ing on it’s lau­rels. Instead they’ve given us a beau­ti­ful con­cept tourer (or wagon, depends on what your idea of a wagon is). It’s clear Honda have their sights set on giv­ing us back a solid Honda wagon along the lines of the Accord Wagon, not seen in the US and Aus­tralia since the fifth-​​generation Accord — although wagon pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues in Euro­pean and Japan­ese markets.

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions remain rel­a­tively unchanged from the Accord Euro, with the the 2.0– and 2.4-litre gas engines, although Honda’s 2.2-litre diesel will be an option when it goes into pro­duc­tion. The Tourer con­cept also sports 4 doors, a longer track and width to improve han­dling and cargo space.

Honda Accord Tourer Con­cept Pics:

Some­times a car you’ve never heard of is thrown up in the media as rumours, and some­times it’s thrown up at a motor­show. The Toy­ota iQ is the lat­ter, a strange look­ing small car that could be a (dimension-​​wise) smaller ver­sion of the Prius, though this is expected to run on a small gas or diesel motor below 1.5L.

The Toy­ota iQ. Click to enlarge.

Apart from look­ing some­what like a rab­bit,� the Echo, the iQ sports an inter­est­ing 3+1 con­fig­u­ra­tion, where the stan­dard 2 seater setup is trans­formed into 3 by a third seat is flipped up in the back. The car is expected to have a front mounted engine, with power deliv­ered through the front wheels.

The iQ is slated to go on sale in Europe in 2009, with no word on other markets.