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:

The new Mazda 6 (Kizuna!) is set to be revealed at the Frank­furt motor show next month on Sep­tem­ber 11, with Mazda claim­ing� improve­ments in safety and the new big issue, envi­ron­men­tal performance.

Euro spec Mazda 6. Look­ing Good.

The new Mazda 6 is longer and wider and may even sport a new V6 model (as it should). It’s expected to go on sale locally in Aus­tralia in mid 2008, but Europe will get it a bit ear­lier late this year. The only pic­ture we have at the moment is at the front, but sources say changes are expected, at least in the styling depart­ment all along the body.

[Source: Carsales ]

The new tur­bocharged 1.9L, straight-​​4 cylin­der diesel Fiat JTD engine is set to go into pro­duc­tion some­time next month in the car and engine mak­ers plant at Pra­tola Serra in Italy.

Two tunes will be avail­able, start­ing at a 132KW for non Fiat Group cus­tomers, and in June 2008, a 140KW ver­sion for Alfa Romeo, Fiat and Lancia.

Fiat says the new 1.9JTD will boast a huge 400nm of torque, the type of fig­ures nor­mally asso­ci­ated with much larger capac­ity V6 or straight 6 petrol engines, while main­tain­ing Euro 5 emis­sion stan­dards. Fiat claims 300nm of torque is avail­able from as low as 1250RPM (!!) which is around 50% more than the cur­rent engine. The peak is 400NM at a� claimed 2000RPM.

Addi­tion­ally, Fiat says econ­omy is bet­ter than larger capac­ity V6 petrol� engines with sim­i­lar per­for­mance, which is expected given the JTD’s exist­ing fuel frugality.

Fiat claims this is achieved with some new design fea­tures, start­ing with a twin stage tur­bocharger aimed to reduce lag, revised EGR and cool­ing setup, a low­er­ing of the com­pres­sion rat­ing from 17.5:1 to 16.5:1 and low volt­age, metal­lic glow plugs.