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NEWS | PRODUCTS | MOTOR SPORT | PARTNERSHIPS | LIFESTYLE | TRAVEL | SOCIETY

ISSUE 57 | HONDA.COM.AU

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HONDA MAG 57

ALL-NEW Jazz Any thing goes

MOTOR SPORT Nürburgring, Marquez, Miller & MotoGP

TECH TALK ASIMO

Travel Tunisia & Maldives

H onda M a g a z ine | H onda . com . au

C ontents I ssue

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2014

02 Product: New Jazz

04 The world of Honda

13 Travel: Tunisia

17 Product: New HR-V

19 Tech Talk: Asimo

22 Travel: Maldives

27 New Product: S660 Concept

34 Art & Society: All roads lead to London

31 HOME SWEET HOME?

40 NEVER MESS WITH A MARQUEZ...

46 Fan Feature

Honda has become a key player in finding a blueprint for future living.

Brothers Marc and Alex Marquez were heading for a unique World Championship double.

42 2014 AUSTRALIAN MOTORCYCLE GRAND PRIX

39 ‘GREEN HELL’ NO PLACE FOR A BREAK

41 JACK THE LAD MAKES THE BIG JUMP

Racing at Nürburgring Endurance Cup.

Jack Miller confirmed his move to the MotoGP big time in 2015.

View the 4 day Program for the Phillip Island Grand Prix.

Some of our Facebook fans show off their favourite Honda pics.

43 HOT SPOTS: QUICK TRAVEL TIPS FOR THAT WELCOME BREAK From Antarctica to Florence to Canberra.

Editor: Stuart Sykes; Executive Editor: Paul Harley; Design & Production: Cassie Dalton. For general enquiries regarding Honda motor vehicle products or services, contact Honda Australia on 1800 804 954.

01

PRODUCT

ANYTHING GOES… …into a Honda Jazz. Honda’s latest expression of the much loved Honda Jazz arrived in Australia in July this year.

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The only thing that might just tempt a Jazz owner to change cars would be… a new Jazz. And there is a range of those now available in Australian dealerships. Speaking of which, they have sold close on 98,000 units since Jazz was first introduced to this country in 2002. Around the world Jazz accounts for 5.2 million units, which makes it a global car in every sense of the word. Let’s get the mechanical stuff out of the way. The latest Jazz to hit our shores comes in three variants:

VTi

(comes standard with reversing camera and Display Audio system with 7-inch colour touchscreen)

VTi-S

(adds Climate Control and 16-inch alloy sports wheels)

VTi-L

(offers leather-appointed interior trim, heated front seats and rear parking sensors)

All three variants use Honda’s 1.5-litre i-VTEC engine, providing 88kW at 6600rpm and 145Nm of torque at 4600rpm. They also feature a CVT automatic transmission system from the Earth Dreams Technology range, one of whose benefits is extraordinary fuel efficiency: just 5.8 litres per 100 kilometres on a combined cycle*. What’s not to love about figures like that? But of course that’s not the real Jazz story, not by any stretch of the imagination…

Fits anything you can imagine You want to be able to do pretty much what you want when the mood takes you, right? Well Jazz is for you: clever practicality has always been one of its core themes. It’s a small car that’s deceptively big and ultra versatile inside for a world of funseeking drivers and their friends. This is thanks in no small part to its flat floor design and those very clever Magic Seats that offer no fewer than 18 possible combinations. They are four Magic Seat modes: Refresh, Long, Tall and Utility. Essentially that means you can pretty much fit anything in, whether it’s people or their assortment of differently shaped cargo. As the Honda Jazz TV commercial suggests, ‘anything’s possible’, from your very own mobile pop-up cinema (but we’ll come back to that) to whatever it takes to head off for a bit of impromptu glamping. Of course, great adventures are better shared. That’s why the Jazz helps you stay even more connected to the outside world. At its heart is a 7-inch Display Audio colour touchscreen, with Bluetooth®° access to your phone with contacts, video^, music and more. Simply tap, pinch or swipe just like you would on your smartphone. Or, if you’d prefer to go hands-free°, you can do that too thanks to active voice control including pre-assigned voice tags and Siri Eyes Free+ mode. Making the Jazz the perfect fit for every lifestyle.

IT’S A POP-UP WORLD Well, that’s all folks. After heading to Brisbane and Melbourne, Sydney saw the final movie screening at Honda Jazz Magic Mobile Drive-in. Thanks to the more than 13,000 people who vied for a car spot. Those hundreds of lucky people who received tickets indulged in over 300 kilos of candy from the fully-stocked candy car and delights from some of the country’s best food trucks – Mr Burger, Eat Art Truck, Nighthawk Diner and the King of the Wing. It certainly was magic: as the audience enjoyed a pop-up drive-in event where everything – a giant 18 meter wide inflatable screen, projector, generator, lights and bean-bags – appeared to come out of the back of a team of Honda Jazz vehicles. Congratulations to the thirty lucky winners and their friends, who soaked up the atmosphere and VIP catering from the ‘Gold Cars’ Area – special VIP front row seats in the all-new Honda Jazz.

For all the photos from the event head to the Honda Facebook page.

03

News

THE WORLD OF HONDA WHAT’S MAKING NEWS FOR HONDA AROUND THE GLOBE?

V8 Supercar star helps on two wheels as well He is arguably the most popular Australian racing driver we have ever seen. He is also hugely successful, by any measure: three V8 Supercar titles in 1996-98-99, five Bathurst crowns between 1996 and 2010 and this year his first Bathurst 12-Hour success. Being first is something Craig Lowndes OAM has become very used to over the years. Now 40, he had just contested his first GT race overseas as we went to press – the mighty Spa 24-hour event – and come third in class and eighth outright. So there is a first time for everything and now, for the first time, Craig has teamed up with Honda. Not on four wheels but on two. Lowndes, Melbourne-born but a Queensland resident, is a new brand ambassador for Honda and has a CBR1000RR

to go with the title – as well as a CRF450 dirt-bike for training and a bit of fun. “He is a great fit to represent our brand,” said Glyn Griffiths, Honda Australia Motorcycles National Manager – Marketing, when the news was announced. “Craig has a genuine passion for motorcycling; we are delighted to welcome him into the Honda family.” “I am excited about what we can do together,” commented Lowndes, whose OAM was awarded in 2010 not only for his achievements on track but also for his extensive community work on road safety. Lowndes was due to attend the Australian round of the MotoGP World Championship at Phillip Island in October as a guest of Honda.

What’s in a name? The answer, in terms of worldwide business, is… everything. Like most of the world’s major corporate players Honda sets a very high value on its international reputation, and in the USA the company can take great comfort from the findings of the 15th annual Reputation Quotient study carried out by Harris Poll, now owned by Nielsen and no strangers to good names themselves.

enjoyed by the 60 most visible companies in the States. The questions address six ‘dimensions’ which are said to contribute to a reputation and influence consumer behavior: emotional appeal, financial performance, products and services, social responsibility, vision and leadership and workplace environment.

In the latest RQ study Honda leapt no fewer than 20 places from 25 to 5 – the first time the company has figured in the top 10 since 2007 – with a rating of 80.87, which made Honda the highest-rated automobile manufacturer in the country in this particular edition of the poll.

Those are exacting criteria for any corporation to meet, and Honda scored particularly well in ‘emotional appeal’ and ‘products and services’. Honda also kept some very good company, if you will pardon the pun: the other names in the top five were Amazon.com, Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Apple Inc. and The Walt Disney Company.

To lend credence to its results the survey canvasses more than 18,000 people to establish the reputations

05

The mower the merrier for Honda

High speeds and Honda go together – even, it seems, when it comes to keeping your grass in trim…

Honda’s mean mower FIND OUT MORE

At Phillip Island, home of the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, the fastest bikes over race weekend – the Repsol Hondas of Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa, for example

...top speed of 187.6 km/h...

– are clocked at well over 330 kilometres an hour as they arrow down Gardner Straight and into Doohan Corner.

So a top speed of 187.6 km/h might seem less than world-shattering by comparison – until you realise that the speed was set by a lawnmower! And there is a Spanish connection, though not with the ‘rider’… 07

...officially entered the Guinness Book of World Records...

We’re not talking any old lawnmower here, of course: it’s Honda’s Mean Mower that has officially entered the Guinness Book of World Records for clocking that speed at a proving-ground in Tarragona, Spain. IADADA is a worldrenowned development partner in matters automotive; their Technical Centre south of Barcelona is the setting for the proving-ground where the Mean Mower was put to the test. The man in the saddle, so to speak, was well-known TV personality Piers Ward. Piers is no stranger to the Mean Mower: he had taken it to around 140 km/h on a previous outing, but what the man-machine combination achieved on March 8, 2014, was in another dimension altogether.

It was just after four in the afternoon when Ward and the Mean Mower broke the existing record – by the small margin of more than 45 km/h. Timing Solutions Limited officiated as the pair were put through their paces, the speed measurement being taken through a 100-metre speed trap. The average speeds of two runs made within one hour were used to determine the record-breaking figure. Naturally, the ‘vehicle’ had to qualify as an efficient cutter of grass and as something that did actually look like a lawnmower. Mean Mower was conceived and built on the platform of a Honda HF2620 ride-on lawnmower. But it was conceived and built by tried and tested hands: they belonged to Team Dynamics, who partner Honda in the British Touring Car Championship and know just a little bit about making things on wheels go faster. So why should a lawnmower be any different, they figured? 08

...1000cc engine...

New chassis… 1000cc engine ‘borrowed’ from a Honda VTR Firestorm motorcycle… special ATV quadbike wheels and tyres and suspension to go with them… fibre-glass (weight-saving) cutter deck… oil and water cooling radiators… and the real touch of class: housing the fuel tank in the grass bag! Any new racing model needs input from the best, so Honda Motor Europe were quick to contact BTCC champions Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden for some pointers. That led to a paddle-shift six-speed gearing system, a sports seat, specialist exhaust and a steering-rack pirated from a Morris Minor! The record-setting speed is an average, remember: Mean Mower is built for even higher speeds. Its power-to-weight ratio – always crucial in racing machinery – is a remarkable 532bhp per tonne and it generates 96Nm of torque in a device that weighs only 140 kilograms. No wonder Mean Mower can actually get up to a stunning 209 km/h top speed. As is always the Honda way, speed is not sacrificed to safety thanks to wheels designed for off-road competition and supersoft tyres for superior grip. It all adds up to a very quick way of mowing your lawn, even if the beast is tamed for that purpose and chomps through the grass at a much more sedate 24km/h. 09

THE TRUE BEGINNING Wings over Wittman mark milestone in life of Honda’s advanced light jet

We are all familiar with the Winnebago, that icon of American culture that carries families around North America by the thousands every summer. But the shores of Lake Winnebago recently saw a major advance in a quite different form of transport – and a milestone for Honda as it takes to the skies. Wittman Regional Airport sits near the city of Oshkosh just west of Lake Winnebago, itself to the west of Lake Michigan in eastern central Wisconsin. On July 28 this year it was the scene of the first public flight by the production version of the HondaJet, the revolutionary light business aircraft which the company has developed in America.

...inspire others through the power and realization of our dreams...

The HondaJet in question was put through its paces as part of the annual EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, claimed to be the world’s foremost aviation event – a claim substantiated by attendance figures of more than half a million people each year. After the aircraft made high-speed and low-speed passes over the airfield Honda Aircraft President and CEO Michimasa Fujino said, “This event was the true beginning of Honda’s aviation venture. We decided to debut the first production HondaJet here as part of Honda’s ongoing commitment to inspire others through the power and realization of our dreams.” Fujino-san should know all about how those dreams are brought to life. An engineer who became a vice-president at Honda R&D Americas Inc, Dr. Fujino has led the HondaJet project from the front: in design, analysis, experimental verification and flight testing.

Hondajet FIND OUT MORE 11

HONDAJET FACTS AND STATS Powered by two

GE Honda

HF120

Range 1180 nm/over 200 kilometres Fastest, highest-flying, quietest, most fuel-efficient jet in class Weight-saving composite construction fuselage OTWEM reduces drag, raises fuel efficiency, minimizes cabin sound/ground noise

turbofan jet engines

Roomiest cabin/largest baggage capacity in class

Max cruising speed

1 crew + 4/5 passengers in typical configuration

420

External dimensions (metres): H 4.54 – L 12.99 – Wingspan 12.12 Cabin dimensions (metres): H 1.46 – L 5.43 – W 1.52

knots/over

Avionics through Garmin® G3000 all-glass system customized by Honda with dual touch-screen controllers and three high-res landscape displays

750km/h

For more in-depth information on Honda’s advanced business aircraft please go to hondajet.com

...the most advanced aircraft of its class in the world... HondaJet is the most advanced aircraft of its class in the world, show-casing a number of pioneering technologies. Foremost amongst them is HondaJet’s over-the-wing engine mount, a drag-reducing innovation that boosts performance while improving fuel

efficiency and providing enhanced comfort for passengers. Dr. Fujino and his team also developed a new natural laminar flow wing and nose, applying a new composite construction to the fuselage to save weight and improve aerodynamic performance. As a result HondaJet boasts the highest speeds, best efficiency and greatest cabin/luggage space in the light jet field. Throughout its short life the HondaJet project has attracted the admiring attention of Dr. Fujino’s peers in the engineering field, marked most recently with the presentation to him in September of the SAE International Clarence L. Johnson Aerospace Vehicle Design and Development Award in Seattle, Washington. SAE International presents itself as ‘the ultimate knowledge source for the engineering profession’. It is made up of some 145,000 engineers and experts with the twin aims of encouraging

lifetime learning for professionals in the mobility engineering field and setting the highest standards for industry engineering.

make your own jet 1

2

The Clarence L. Johnson award goes to individuals who have made career-long contributions to the innovative design and development of advanced aircraft or spacecraft. Earlier in the year the first production HondaJet was put through its paces by pilot Warren Gould in its inaugural flight at Greensboro, North Carolina. During a flight lasting one hour and 24 minutes the aircraft was taken to 15,500 feet and reached a top speed of 348 knots while the crew ran through a range of checks from handling to avionics and system functions.

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8 3

4 Repeat other side

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5

6

Honda’s plan is to have aircraft ready for delivery as soon as the important milestone of FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) type certification is obtained. Mountain Fold

Valley Fold

12

Travel

TUNISIA’S PAST

A NEW PAGE Jane Burton Taylor

Tunisia Tunisia is the smallest of the Arab countries that make up North Africa, but it belies its size in its weighty share of astounding archaeological sites and natural beauty. For lovers of antiquity, neighbouring Libya and Algeria are currently out of bounds. Tunisia remains one of

A French protectorate from the late 1800s to 1956, Tunisia is a moderate Islamic country. The Arab Spring started here in 2011, and the revolution that followed saw the ousting of an autocratic president and subsequently, the country’s first free elections. A burgeoning democracy, with continuing links to France – some 700,000 Tunisians currently live there – it is a country with a rare intact artistic and cultural legacy.

Arriving in the capital of Tunis, we find its wide tree-lined streets are a little timeworn, but full of life and still elegant. The old medina at the end of the road dissolves into another world. Here in a maze of stone-paved streets is traditional Tunisian architecture: grand old palaces and villas stacked up and even out over the street, neighbours to the chaos of thin alleyways that make up the souk.

the few countries in the region still green-lighted for travellers – including Jane Burton Taylor. 14

Dougga is one of the most evocative and the most famous of Tunisia’s Roman sites.

We are travelling in Tunisia with a specialist archaeological tour company with two local guides and two British counterparts, one a gregarious raconteur archaeologist, and a tenacious local driver who never seems to tire. The drawback of this organised tour is a rehearsed and regimented itinerary, but the bonus is that each day we travel to sites on a par with Pompeii. The Romans, who extended their imperial reach deep into North Africa after the third Punic War in 149BC, stayed for some five centuries, making a certain kind of magic with the Phoenicians, who themselves arrived in the 10th century BC, founding Carthage as their capital. Our first stop is the Bardo Museum, reputed as one of the two best in North Africa, the other being the Egyptian museum in Cairo. Recently refurbished, the museum is in part housed in the old Bardo Palace, including the quarters that were once home to the royal harem.

Today it hosts room after room of extraordinarily beautiful mosaics, the pinnacle of the mix of Roman and North African cultures. These mosaics have been lifted from the opulent villas that dotted the Tunisian countryside and towns. They are, as our guide says, “snapshots of Roman life”.

Tunisia

After a few days exploring nearby sites, including the once-great Phoenician metropolis of Carthage (now in an upmarket northern suburb of Tunis), and the incredible circular island that was the renowned sea-farers’ ship-building yards, we head to the mountains and a whistle-stop tour of archaeological gems. Set on a hillside amid olive groves and shepherds meandering with their herds of sheep, Dougga is one of the most evocative and the most famous of Tunisia’s Roman sites. It has a grand amphitheatre, several outpost temples dramatically set away from the town, and a stone-paved urban centre with shops, villas, both summer and winter baths, and a very imposing capitol, essentially the town council building. 15

Reputedly the fourth most holy city in the Islamic world...

We wander for hours in this once opulent town of antiquity. Standing at the top of the capitol steps, our guide gives us an insight into the driving force behind its founders. “When the leaders were on the steps here, talking to the people, it was as if they were standing with the full weight of Rome behind them,” he says. Much of Dougga was built and inhabited by local people in order to gain Roman favour and secure the status of a ‘colonia’. By building the pre-requisite structures and monuments of the Roman culture – baths, theatre, temples – they were granted Roman citizenship and given more favourable tax rates; sometimes they were even loaned an architect to design their homes and towns. Another magical highlight is Thuburbo Maius. As we are travelling out of season, in the Northern Hemisphere winter, the place is almost deserted on our visit. It is early afternoon, and the town, which lies in a gentle valley in undulating countryside, has a character all of its own. Wildflowers grow everywhere, even between pavers in the gracious peristyles of villas. Most of the buildings date from the 2nd century AD. The massive capitol, with its lush pink limestone pillars, was dedicated to Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and the gods Jupiter, Minerva and Juno. The head of the statue of Jupiter (the figures once stood 7.5 metres high) is now on display at the Bardo.

As in the other Roman towns, locals were spoilt for choice in their place of worship. Here there is an unusual circular temple to Mercury, also a ‘house of Neptune’ with wonderfully playful mosaics of flying fish. On a hill on the edge of the excavated town is a marker of the changing civilisations, a temple to Baal, the pre-Roman god who thankfully, once Romanised, no longer required child sacrifices. We spend our last night in a charming hotel on the edge of the old kasbah in the city of Kairouan. Reputedly the fourth most holy city in the Islamic world, it has a sprawling medina and the impressive Barber Mosque of Uqba, with an immense porticoed courtyard which features thousands of columns, most pilfered from the local ancient sites. From here it is an easy day trip to the coast and the Sousse Museum, which has more large-scale mosaic masterpieces. Looping back via the town of El Jem, once a thriving market town, we are all caught off guard by the appearance of a Roman colosseum on the horizon. As our guide points out, the World Heritagelisted colosseum is all the evidence you need of the real scope of Roman civilisation in Africa. It is certainly an apt conclusion to a journey in an intriguing country with an invaluable legacy of ancient heritage and, at the same time, with elections scheduled for later this year, a burgeoning new democratic future. 16

PRODUCT

New HR-V en route down under

A new compact SUV is on its way to Australia – but it goes by a name that will ring some bells for those of you who have been connected with Honda for a while. 17

Funny things, words. And acronyms are even stranger. When the original HR-V came to Australia in 1997, the first question was: what does ‘HR-V’ mean anyway? Apparently it was ‘Hi-Rider Revolutionary Vehicle’, and in a sense it really did live up to its name – it was ahead of its time.

The idea behind the HR-V’s design is that it should bring together the best of several worlds: minivan, coupé and SUV. The real point is, of course, that the whole is even greater than the sum of those considerable parts.

While 5000 units were sold here between 1999 and 2001, the car was withdrawn from the Australian Honda range in 2001 and build was discontinued in 2006.

The coupé part comes from the sense of personal space afforded by the car’s front seating area, giving driver and passenger the sense of being in a car as they might more commonly know it.

The new HR-V is built on a car platform, rather than the more oldfashioned way of putting a body on a sub-frame in the manner of a truck or purpose-built off-road vehicle. In this case,-V, that platform is the Honda Jazz, so it’s handy that this issue of your digital magazine also carries a feature on the latest iteration of that superbly versatile vehicle.

The minivan part comes in the rear, with knee room, seat styling and cargo space queuing up to add their contribution to the vehicle’s all-round capacities. The original centre-tank lay-out allows Honda to incorporate the much-loved Magic Seats, but the load-carrying space is already such that you can start thinking three golf bags in the back…

Honda Australia is anticipating the new HR-V’s arrival in early 2015 and Honda Australia Director Stephen Collins is excited by the prospect. “It is fitting that the new small SUV will take the HR-V moniker as Honda enters the country’s fastest-growing segment with a red-hot competitor,” says Mr. Collins. “The new HR-V is built on the new Jazz platform and will offer sporty, versatile characteristics. It will provide customers with a wider choice in the SUV market, complementing Honda’s medium SUV offering, the popular CR-V.”

18

Tech talk

Fantasy, pure science fiction?

HE’S GOT THE WORLD AT HIS FEET... World Cup Final 2040: the pressure’s on as 100,000 fans watch anxiously, along with a global TV audience in the millions…up steps the penalty-taker, no sign of nerves… he shoots, he scores… and ASIMO wheels away to accept the embraces of his teammates! Fantasy, pure science fiction? Maybe so… and maybe not. When you consider what the latest iteration of Honda’s astonishing robot ASIMO can do – and yes, kicking a soccer ball is one of its most recent skills – just 14 years after it was first invented, then who knows what may happen in another couple of decades? ASIMO – Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, in case you’d forgotten – was ‘born’ in 2000, on a platform of two-legged walking technology created by Honda scientists over the preceding decade and a half. FIND OUT MORE

130cm

Our aim is to create a robot that can really help people... The latest ASIMO stands 130 centimetres high, because that is the approximate height at which it can look a seated human in the eye, weighs 48 kilograms (and has been shedding weight since it came into the world) and can now perform tasks

Can you do sign language in English and Japanese? Thought not – but ASIMO can. that make you seriously wonder if there isn’t a little human being under that striking white exterior after all. As the people at Honda Robotics like to put it, ASIMO has gone from being an automatic machine to an autonomous one: in a sense, it is now thinking for itself and responding to the behavior of those around it without having to rely on an operator to come and help out. ASIMO’s steps are now so advanced that it can run at up to nine kilometres an hour; its mobility is so enhanced that it can climb stairs fluidly and easily; it can stand on one leg, hop and even jump. The robot’s technologies are now so well developed that it can use its multi-fingered hands to open bottles, pour drinks into a cup and not crush the cup

while doing so. A handshake is no problem – and ASIMO can now distinguish between the faces and voices of three people speaking to him simultaneously. Try that one yourself… The robot’s ability to react to a changing situation is demonstrated in its ability to swerve out of an oncoming human’s way, or step aside graciously to allow a person to take priority. Better-mannered than some humans we could name… Ever since arriving on the planet ASIMO has been an eager traveller, not least of all in 2014. Time spent in the United States included an appearance at the EAA AirVenture in Wisconsin where the HondaJet gave further proof of the company’s technologically innovative capacity. When might we see a HondaJet flown by ASIMO?

More recently, ASIMO went to Moscow’s International Automobile Salon to make its public debut in Europe. One key advantage of not being human is that ASIMO is virtually indefatigable – 68 ‘performances’ during the show are the proof of that. And when the battery runs down, no problem: ASIMO can now take care of recharging on its own. Vikki Hood is Honda Motor Europe’s Corporate Communications Manager, and she is as excited as anyone by the potential ASIMO still holds within. “Our aim,” she says, “is to create a robot that can really help people, interacting with them and enhancing their daily lives.” Technological genius allied to a desire to improve the human lot: ASIMO is Honda all over. 20

AN ASIMO TIMELINE 2000 ASIMO is ‘born’ on November 20, the latest enhancement of Honda’s previous P2/P3 work on i-WALK technology.

2002 Addition of Intelligence Technology means ASIMO can now interpret human postures and gestures and move independently in accordance with them. It can greet a human being, follow, or go where pointed.

2005 ASIMO becomes task-capable: it can now shake hands, hold hands and walk alongside someone, and carry objects on a tray or in a cart. Its running speed has improved to six km/h and new posture control logic is at work.

2007 ASIMO multiplies! No, Honda hasn’t pulled off some genetic miracle – but two ASIMO robots can now act independently or in collaboration one with the other, assessing workloads and distributing tasks with maximum efficiency.

2011 Autonomous Behaviour Control takes ASIMO to a whole new level. Co-existence with human beings comes a lot closer as ASIMO’s 57 degrees of freedom mean enhanced manual dexterity, higher speeds of movement and increased agility. 21

Travel

PLEASURE ISLAND

There be swaying palms, there be private plunge pools and there be whale sharks. The piratical Belinda Jackson discovers the treasures and pleasures of the Maldives.

The archipelago comprises 1200 islands...

The customs queue at Sydney Airport is long and messy and the staff are brief and to the point. “Where are you going to,” asks the customs official curtly. “I’m going to the Maldives,” I say. It is a ridiculously decadent statement for a Tuesday morning. In the blink of an eye, the customs officer drops her guard and all but cups her chin in her hands. “Oh, the Maldives!” she exclaims, suddenly soft and dreamyeyed. “We had our honeymoon there in the ‘70s.” What is it about islands that makes us desire them, daydream about them, lust after them? As a rule of thumb, we like them small, isolated and hard to get to. The Maldives pretty much takes the cake for all three criteria. The archipelago comprises 1200 islands clustered into 26 atolls that are splashed across the equatorial line, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Yet only a quarter of them are inhabited. And they are tiny. The island of Malé, the capital, is too small to fit an airport on it. It’s on the island next door, Hulhule. Ninety-nine percent of the country is ocean and its longest road runs over four interconnected islands in the Lamuu Atoll,

just 18km in total. And with an average elevation of just 1.5 meters above sea level – making it the lowest country on the planet – it’s tough not to lob the Maldives into the ‘Last Chance to See’ category. In fact, the morning I am flying across the country to visit one of its newest resorts, Maalifushi by COMO Resorts, I’m told the flight is being rerouted because the local airport we were heading to is under water, thanks to a big tide. The difficulties may seem insurmountable, but you can’t stop progress. Last year, the Maldives cracked the one million visitor mark and it’s still rising. Not bad, considering the first paying tourists wandered in just 42 years ago. What Global Financial Crisis? The last decade has seen a wealth of… well, wealth. Fabulous yachts, luxury spas, underwater restaurants and overwater villas. Pick your statement-making experience. Royals escaping the paparazzi heat in the Caribbean are mixed up with fashion designers and tycoons – the interesting and those living on their interest – the well-heeled meets the well-shod. And, of course, honeymooners, honeymooners, honeymooners. 23

Maldives I haven’t seen the water temperature go below 26C for two years...

“By God, I envy this man his island, and wish that it was mine to withdraw to,” wrote an early Maldivian tourist, the Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta, who visited in 1343, 200 years after the country’s conversion from Hinduism to Islam. The Maldives has got it all going on: the swaying palm trees, the golden beaches and the local sailboats, picturesque dhonis, whose festive prows rise and fall with the ocean swell as they traverse the stretches of deep ocean blue that change abruptly to bright aquamarine when they enter the atolls’ calm lagoons. It’s the archetypical view best soaked up over a late breakfast at Cocoa Island by COMO, in the South Malé Atoll, about 45 minutes by boat from the airport.

“I haven’t seen the water temperature go below 26C for two years,” says keen diver Laurent Sola, the resort’s general manager. There are more than 10 quality dive sites close by Cocoa Island, which give you a taste for the country’s underwater celebrities. Manta Point is a hang for manta rays up to 3.5m across while Gurida Corner is a hammerhead shark hotspot, and the shark cleaning station at Cocoa Thila is Laurent’s favourite. With Cocoa Island’s sole restaurant, Ufaa, often named the country’s best, it’s hard to empathise when he talks about the difficulty in getting good cheese in the Maldives. Next door, at South Ari Atoll, everyone’s talking about diving with whale sharks, which are just starting to be tracked through the country, and there are whispers of more consistent sightings as well as spectacular surf breaks deep in the southern atolls. 24

...carefree and unleashed...

While the resort-rich atolls close to Malé are easily reached and in the guide books, the surf breaks down in the deep south-west are a secret closely guarded by the liveaboard boat crews and the luxe surf safari pioneer TropicSurf, which has just set up shack on the only resort in the remote Thaa Atoll, Maalifushi by COMO. Surfers, during the April to October surf season, your itinerary should read thus: early breakfast of tropical fruits and something tasty from the spa menu, a morning with your surf guide and speedboat out at the best-known break, Farms, the afternoon spent in the wellness resort’s Shambhala spa. Non-surfers, replace Farms with a morning by the plunge pool in your overwater villa or spent in the underwater disco that is the Maldives’ rich marine life. The country’s signature fish is the bright orange-and-white clownfish (hello, Nemo), but its perky colours are rivalled by the peacock-blues, silver flashes and yellow strips of the parrot fish, wrass, sweet lips, unicorn fish and the delightfully named Moorish Idol. You can take a sea plane in to Maalifushi, but you can also leave by sparkling luxury cruiser, and we slip through the break between islands, back out into the open ocean and up to Malé. Flying fish skip over the water alongide of us, where yesterday we watched little spinner dolphins gambol and leap in the air, carefree and unleashed. It’s a metaphor, it’s a lifestyle to aspire to. It’s the quintessential Maldives.

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GETTING THERE Fly via Kuala Lumpur or Singapore to the Maldives.

CURRENCY & VISAS Australians are issued a free visa on arrival. Formerly, the currency was cowrie shells. Now it’s the rufiyaa, although most resorts run on US dollars. MVR14 = AUD$1.

GETTING AROUND Maldivian Air flies to a handful of tiny airstrips around the country and the islands are linked by sea planes and inter-island ferries. If you have time between flights at Malé International Airport, take a local ferry from the airport for a walk around Malé.

STAYING THERE Maalifushi by COMO Resorts’ overwater suites cost from US$1000 a night. Cocoa Island by COMO Resorts’ dhoni suite costs from US$850 a night. The resorts are one hour apart by seaplane. Phone (02) 9331 2670, see comohotels.com.

MORE INFORMATION: visitmaldives.com.

Belinda Jackson travelled to the Maldives as a guest of COMO Resorts.

26

PRODUCT

‘COOL CARS, UNIQUE TO HONDA’

FIND OUT MORE

It’s a fast-moving world we live in. But the drive for improved mobility has always been the guiding-light behind Honda’s innovative activities – and a new concept car underlines that fact.

S360

...a top speed of 115 km/h...

It’s a fast-moving world we live in. But the drive for improved mobility has always been the guidinglight behind Honda’s innovative activities – and a new concept car underlines that fact.

Section’ to prepare for life as a car-maker and by 1959 a prototype was well under way.

Some things, it seems, don’t change. Around 60 years ago Honda was the dominant force in world motorcycle racing; but Soichiro Honda was also looking carefully at the four-wheeled world.

His company, convinced of the need to use racing as a test-bed for automotive excellence, was already building the circuit we know so well today as Suzuka, home of the Japanese Formula 1 Grand Prix.

As Japan emerged from its post-war doldrums, its Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) called for a Japanese answer to the VW ‘beetle’: a ‘people’s car’ which was to be capable of seating four people, travelling at a top speed of 100 km/h and also affordable. An exciting development in those awakening days…

Mr. Honda called his research engineers and told them to build… a sports car. On June 5, 1962, the Suzuka Circuit opened. To mark the auspicious day, Honda demonstrated a new car: the S360, driven by none other than Soichiro Honda himself. The car was a sensation when shown at that year’s Japan National Auto Show.

In 1961 MITI further identified three industries which would come under the wing of its planned Specified Industry Protection Bill: special steel, petro-chemicals and… automobiles. There was a catch: no newcomers would be allowed to enter those industries, so Honda had to leap into action, producing mini sports cars and light trucks to demonstrate its proven record in the industry and qualify under the new MITI regulations.

But Soichiro Honda was already a ground-breaker even at that early stage. As his thoughts turned towards a mini passenger car, two priorities dominated his thinking: comfort and power. It’s a duality that has endured through his company’s long and distinguished history.

Initially MITI specified an engine capacity of just 360cc for these new mini cars and light trucks, a figure that lasted through to the mid-Seventies. Hence the names given to Honda’s earliest foray into the market on four wheels: the S360.

His research engineers first developed the XA170, an air-cooled four-cylinder 360cc car, which became the platform on which the first ‘real’ Honda passenger car was built. By 1966 that car was a reality: the N360 boasted 31 horsepower, could seat four adults in relative comfort, had a top speed of 115 km/h and could achieve 28 kilometres to the litre of petrol.

This mini sports car was the product that announced Honda to a watching nation as a new force in automobile manufacturing back in the early Sixties. Honda had set up a ‘Third Research

As Honda’s own official history suggests, “the mini-car market represented an opportunity for Honda to compete using the technologies it already had.” Now let’s fast-forward six decades or so…

S800

Then something very Soichiro Honda happened.

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S660

Back to the Future Honda, with teammates Marquez and Pedrosa, is the dominant force at the pinnacle of world motorcycle racing. And on four wheels a new Honda concept car has again been turning heads. Honda’s stand at the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show used a familiar rallying-cry: ‘Live outside the box’. And the new car we are going to talk about here is certainly not a box… Honda’s latest Concept car is the S660 – a new, small sports car whose guiding principles are dynamic design, stability, agility and the sheer joy of being driven. Some things do change, of course: the S360 was to be powered by a 360cc engine, the S660 Concept by… a 660cc engine because 660cc has been the prescribed capacity for the mini-car segment since 1990. What we know is that S660 Concept is a midships open-top sports-type small vehicle, its three-cylinder engine mated to a seven-speed CVT. The turbo-charged power unit is slated to produce 67bhp, which may sound underwhelming but will be driving a car that weighs only 1900 pounds… Back in the Sixties, when he first launched his own mini car, Soichiro Honda stipulated it should be reasonably priced, easy to drive, offer speed and power and seat its passengers in comfort and safety. Technological capabilities may have changed; those underlying principles stay the same. As the President and CEO of Honda Motor Company, Takanobu Ito, said at the S660 Concept’s unveiling, “This model embodies the freewheeling thinking of young Honda engineers, who want to make a cool car that is unique to Honda. Our engineers are devoting their passion and technologies to the development of this model.” Will the latest Honda concept suffer the same fate as its 1962 predecessor? The open-top, two-seater S360 never did reach the market as Honda opted instead for the S500, then the S600 in its place. At time of writing Honda had not confirmed whether, or when, S660 would move from concept to production. But once again an eye-catching, open-topped two-seater Honda sports car is poised to become one of the most startlingly attractive cars on contemporary roads.

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S500

Winners of Honda Purchase & Ownership Customer Surveys July 2014 Prize Draw

20,000km

Kei cars were a form of stimulus package...

40,000km

service survey submission


Mrs. A. Dorman, NSW

Mrs. L. Dressing, VIC

PURCHASE

survey submission Mr. S. Williams, SA

20,000km

service survey submission Mr. S. Gardiner, WA

October 2014 Prize Draw

20,000km

The Yellow Platers Next time you are in Japan, take a closer look at the vehicle registration plates on the roads around you. If you see any with black lettering on a yellow background or vice versa, those vehicles belong to the segment known as ‘kei cars’. The name comes from the Japanese for light automobile, kei jidosha, and covers small cars, vans and trucks. Black on yellow means it’s a private registration; the other way round denotes a commercial vehicle. These yellow-platers, as they are nicknamed, have been a feature of Japanese motoring life for well over 50 years now and Honda’s

20,000km

own small-vehicle thinking has frequently had to fit in with it since the heady days of the S360 back in 1962.



Ms. K. Kirkwood, NSW

Mr. & Mrs. Barnes, QLD

Kei cars were a form of stimulus package to an emergent post-war industry in Japan. They would be cheaper, with purchase tax of only three per cent as opposed to the standard five, the purchaser would pay less weight tax on the vehicle, and both insurance and road tax would also be cheaper.

10,000km

Honda’s N360, released in 1967, initially cost ¥313,000 whereas the usual going rate for cars in the class was ¥370,000. By May 1967 it was the segment leader.

service survey submission Mrs. L. Stewart, NSW

PURCHASE

survey submission Mr. D. Barr, VIC

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Tech talk

HOME SWEET HOME? We already have cars that can do our thinking for us. Now Honda has become a key player in finding a blueprint for future living which may mean our homes are also more switched-on than we are.

Smart Home FIND OUT MORE

It could only happen in California... Well, not quite: Honda is involved in building the house of the future both in the western United States and at Saitama City in Japan, but it’s the development on the West Village campus of the University of California at Davis that has been catching the international eye. The campus to the west of Sacramento is already part of a planned zero net energy housing development which was established in 2011 and is part of the response to the progressive State of California’s Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan. The EESP envisages zero net energy consumption by 2020. The USA shows gargantuan appetites in energy as well as in other areas. The importance of Honda’s work on the Honda Smart Home US is that domestic power and light-duty vehicle use account for around 44% of the States’ overall greenhouse gas emissions. And the smart thing about Honda’s house? It returns a profit in energy: it generates more power per annum than it consumes – and that includes what is required to power the Fit (Jazz in Australia) EV that comes with the house to take care of the daily commute. After all, if we can perfect technologies which provide renewable energy in more than sufficient quantities for our daily usage, then the world is on its way to being a much smarter place to live in. Steve Center of American Honda’s Environmental Business Development Office summed it up this way. “With the Honda Smart Home, we’ve developed technologies and design solutions to address two primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions – homes and cars.”

A living laboratory

...it generates more power per annum than it consumes...

That’s how Honda sees this project, which will see a member of the UC Davis academic community take up residence. Begun in 2013, Honda Smart Home US is centred around a Honda-developed home energy management system (HEMS) that sees further into the future than most of us have cared to look. Sensors installed throughout will help Honda and its partners in the project, UC Davis and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), to analyse and exchange data on the home’s use of energy.

zero net energy housing

The idea of HEMS is that it can monitor, control and make the best possible use of electricity. That energy comes, in the first place, from a 10kWh lithium ion battery energy system in the garage, which stores energy harvested from solar panels for overnight use. In essence HEMS assesses the household’s needs and shifts power around to meet them. Best of all, the Smart Home is capable of managing its energy resources so well that it can conceivably feed excess energy back into the grid if need be. Honda Smart Home US cuts the energy used for heating, cooling and lighting – the three main basic drains on the system – by half when compared with a conventional home in the same area. Typically, Honda has seen the Smart Home as a ground-up design: the push for sustainable living and mobility begins with the design of the house and particularly with the materials used in its construction.

Sustainable resourcefulness When we say ‘from the ground up’, we really mean it: Smart Home uses the geothermal energy, i.e. energy derived from the internal heat of the planet itself, through a system of boreholes beneath the building. There are eight of them, each sunk 20 feet (approx. six metres) into the soil to help heat and cool floors and ceilings through the year.

If the ground is useful, so is the roof: all of Smart Home’s energy is supplied by a photovoltaic system mounted up there. Not sure about ‘photovoltaic’? It relates to the generation of electromotive force by light incident on an interface between certain pairs of substances, but for our purposes it means Smart Home is solar-powered.

We are accustomed to seeing homes built on concrete slabs, and Smart Home is no different. Well, yes it is: this house’s concrete slab is laid with an infusion of a natural substance called pozzolan. Why? Because concrete typically uses a binding agent – its cement – which uses fossil fuels to heat limestone to a very high temperature. Pozzolan is derived from volcanic ash and replaces around half of the traditional cement.

And solar-powered enough to provide more energy than the home and car combined need for a year’s use. Heating, cooling, lighting, hot water and appliances – all will be fed by the rooftop system. The Honda vehicle that comes with Smart Home has been adapted to take DC power from solar panels or stationary battery; that means a saving on the energy usually lost to heat when power has to be converted DC to AC or vice versa. The car will be capable of charging fully within two hours. 32

‘SLOW AND SMART’ SAITAMA A SITE FOR SORE EYES

96%

Construction Waste recycled

Saitama may be a long way from Davis, but the Japanese city is the location for a project to which Honda and its local partners Sekisui House and Toshiba have applied the slogan ‘Slow and Smart’. The demonstration house built here by Honda is a two-family dwelling which can, like its American counterpart, generate surplus electricity: any such over-supply can be redirected to another household. Sekisui’s own ‘Green First Zero’ smart houses also use energy-saving and energy-creating technologies managed by HEMS. Toshiba’s contribution covers smart home appliances, energy devices and cloud-based services, while Honda’s long-standing commitment to ‘the joy and freedom of mobility’ rounds out the triple push for energy excellence. Space design, the deployment of robotics, an autonomous parking system for the accompanying Fit EV and a raft of other technologies contribute to this Smart House and help demonstrate what Honda’s President and CEO Takanobu Ito called “a three-company collaboration beyond the boundaries of industries”. As he also said, building and operating a real house is the only way to gauge the technologies’ contribution to the quality of life.

Tripping the light fantastic Honda’s motive force in developing new technologies is always to improve the quality of life for human beings. So… any idea what rhodopsin is? Neither had we, but it turns out to be a photo-pigment in the human eye. A very helpful one at that: rhodopsin helps us see in low-light conditions. Why is that good in Honda Smart Home US? Well, we are encouraged not to put lights on if we wake and have to move round in the night, because bright light will disturb our circadian rhythms. In other words, we don’t want to be fooled into thinking it’s daylight because bright light has pierced the darkness. So Smart Home has amber lights in the hallways with sufficient illumination to allow accident-free movement around the house and a quick return to the sleeping state.

Speaking of light, Smart Home is very conscious of it, and proves it by adopting a technique known as ‘passive design’. The south-facing windows are designed to optimise heating and cooling; north-facing windows harvest natural light and ventilation. (We need to bear in mind, of course, that things are the ‘wrong way round’ in the northern hemisphere…)

“We will identify needs for the lifestyle of the future,” he added, “which we could never see from behind a desk, and we will strive to create fun and dream-inspiring mobility and living spaces.”

Last but by no means least, the materials used play their own part. A metal roof (more easily recyclable) and timber harvested from sustainable forests are just two examples of the construction materials that will contribute to the achievement of ‘green’ certification. And a remarkable 96% of the construction waste was recycled.

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Art & Society

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BIG BEN ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL

TOWER OF LONDON

It gives ‘Bond Street’ new meaning: movie and car buff Roderick Eime traces the world’s most famous spy’s trail through the streets of London. Visiting Central London is like walking on to a movie set. So many films and television series have been set in and around the English capital that it’s impossible to list them all. From such classics as Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper, through to television milestones like Doctor Who, Minder and The Avengers, London is a firm favourite with movie-makers, movie-goers and movie tourists. Everyone has their favourites, but as a lad with a particularly vivid imagination that just won’t quit, I’ve set out in search of Bond,

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James Bond. The seed of the world’s favourite spy was germinated by the author, Ian Fleming, who has himself been the subject of a swashbuckling BBC America mini-series, entitled ‘Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond’. In the series, set in WWII London, the young playboy-cum-secret agent devises a clandestine service for His Majesty’s Government while still finding time to indulge his passion for womanising and high living. Followers of the 23-installment 007 movie franchise will recognise how the 50-year cavalcade has circled the globe, but always returns to the epicentre of British counter espionage, London, the home of MI6. What was once known as MI6 (Military Intelligence Section 6) is now dubbed with the more forthright moniker, simply Secret Intelligence Service or SIS, with headquarters located at 85 Albert Embankment,

SCOTT’S 20 Mount St, London

LONDON FILM MUSEUM 45 Wellington St, London

BENSON, PERRY & WHITLEY 9 Cork St, London

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM Clive Steps, King Charles St, London

ANDERSON & SHEPPARD 32 Old Burlington St, London

THE NATIONAL GALLERY Trafalgar Square, London

DUKES HOTEL 35 St James's Pl, London

MI6 85 Albert Embankment, Lambeth, London

Vauxhall. Until very recently, its existence was masked by the bland title ‘Government Offices’ but it is now forever etched into our minds as the building that exploded in Skyfall. No, you can’t have a tour, but the £152m, 25-year-old building with 100mm thick windows will be willingly pointed out on any of the sightseeing rides. On the edge of St James Park, a stone’s throw from Number 10, are the Churchill War Rooms, one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. Located in the basement of the Treasury building in Whitehall, they were constructed in 1938 and operational just prior to Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. Clearly somebody knew something. Touring the restored subterranean corridors of power is an eerie recollection of the horrors of the Blitz when all of London went underground for nearly twelve months in 1940 and ’41. 35

Churchill’s bed chamber and those of Britain’s highest ranking military men are there as well as the planning rooms and mess halls. You can easily imagine Fleming waiting; cigarette in hand, for his moment with the famous British Bulldog. Back in Trafalgar Square, Skyfall’s Bond meets the new youthful gadget geek, Q, on the steps of the National Gallery. Trafalgar Square is one of the most significant sites in London and recalls the days when VE Day was announced to a joyful throng who danced, kissed, sang and drank while holding up that famous salute, V for Victory. Fleming was there, I’m sure, wondering where Bond’s next adventure might be now that the Nazi scourge was defeated. Touring the many 007 film locations from Trinity Square to Canary Wharf is sure to generate an urge to emulate this licensed-to-kill super spy and how better to start than with a martini, ‘shaken not stirred’? Duke’s Bar, at the boutique hotel of the same name in St James, is the location reputed to be Ian Fleming’s former watering hole and the inspiration for the classic line first uttered by Sean Connery in 1964’s Goldfinger.

Any true Bond aficionado would then order a Vesper for his glamorous companion, serving it in “a deep champagne goblet”. How do you make one? Ask James. “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?” When it’s time for dinner, do as Fleming did, and dine in classic style at Scott’s, where our hero would enjoy the best seafood with his best friend in the service, Chief of Staff Bill Tanner, or with his secretary, Mary Goodnight. Originally in Coventry Street, Scott’s is now in Mount Street. Breakfast is performed with military routine. In London it means sitting down to The Times, with two large cups of “very strong coffee, from De Bry in New Oxford Street” brewed in a Chemex coffee-maker and an egg served in a dark blue egg cup with a gold ring round the top, boiled for three and a third minutes. Wholewheat toast, Jersey butter and Norwegian heather honey from Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly follows.

Dressing to kill is part of the Bond allure and this is where a little mystery arises. No one appears to know his tailor although John Pearson, Fleming’s biographer, claims he bought his suits “off row” from Benson, Perry and Whitley on Cork Street and would wear them “until they were in threads”. Bond needed to up his game from the wartime austerity instilled by Fleming and it seems 007 wandered around the block to Savile Row and the century-old establishment of Anderson & Sheppard (at 32 Old Burlington St) where his adversary Count Lippe from Thunderball also shopped. Bond’s timepieces are legendary and he also appreciates the tastes of his villains. Originally, Bond wore a Rolex Oyster Perpetual, but that evolved into various specialised permutations of the Omega Seamaster for the big screen. Moonraker’s evil Hugo Drax (played by Michel Lonsdale) wears a Patek Phillipe.

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To experience some of the adrenaline-charged excitement that made Bond the man he is, jump aboard The Ultimate MI6 Spy Experience. This high-speed waterborne thrill ride emulates, after a fashion, the wild boat chase along the Thames from 1999’s The World is Not Enough. Speed at a heart-stopping rate of knots while enjoying a commentary that highlights the 007 locations along the way – if you can hear above the screaming. While we may be charged up from rocketpropelled boats, jet fighters or motorcycles, Bond is known for his cars. Really fancy cars. Right in the heart of the famous theatre district of Covent Garden is the London Film Museum. On display until March 2015 (at least) is ‘Bond in Motion’, the official exhibition of James Bond vehicles from the original film series. It is the largest display of its kind ever staged in London. Each one of the 23 official movies made since 1962 has featured signature vehicles that have propelled our heroic super-agent in pursuit of villains or in some equally death-defying escape. Roderick Eime

From the camouflaged Honda CRF250R that Daniel Craig uses to chase his similarly-mounted fugitive villain across the rooftops of Istanbul in Skyfall to the signature Aston Martins and missile-equipped Jaguar XKR convertible from Die Another Day, the exhibition is a virtual toy shop for boys who refuse to grow up. Like me. There are no replicas. You’ll only see the real deal, because each of the 50 machines is original, either retained after filming or, in the case of those that got away, hunted down and recovered by franchise owners, EON Productions, or the Ian Fleming Foundation (IFF). The IFF owns 33 original vehicles, 17 of which are part of the display. There’s Goldfinger’s magnificent Rolls-Royce Phantom III and the unmistakable Lotus Esprit S1 submersible from The Spy Who Loved Me, displayed alongside lesser-known 007 cars such as the Citroën 2CV (For Your Eyes Only) and the Crocodile Submarine from Octopussy.

37

Unlike most of the unique specially-constructed movie vehicles, there were actually twenty Honda motorcycles prepared for location shooting in Istanbul. Apart from Bond’s ‘street’ bike, there are ‘police’ bikes and two CRF450Rs used as high-speed camera mounts because they were the only ones fast enough to keep up with the action. This recent departure from ultra hi-tech, Q-inspired gadgets and computer graphics heralds a return to a purer form of action, more reliant on the skills of the stunt team and regular ‘street’ vehicles. So apart from such dastardly four-wheel weapons as 2002’s Die Another Day’s Aston Martin Vanquish with specially installed Ford V8 engine, custom AWD and cloaking device there are cute accessories like the tuk-tuk from 1983’s Octopussy and even a restored 1970 Honda ATC 90 (trike) ridden by Connery in Diamonds are Forever. For Bond, though, all roads lead right back to London. Despite a briefcase full of passports and the freedom to travel anywhere on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, James always puts his feet up in his flat off the King’s Road in Chelsea. Bond’s 24th film is due to begin filming in early 2015 with Daniel Craig confirmed again in the lead role. There will be snow and sand, but chances are London will make another appearance. Gentlemen, place your bets.

Roderick Eime

38

Motor Sport

‘GREEN HELL’ NO PLACE FOR A BREAK Endurance racing may not seem like your idea of a break, but for two of Honda’s WTCC drivers it was the perfect busman’s holiday...

It’s been a challenging World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) season so far for Honda’s four drivers. They have yet to post a first victory of 2014, with just four rounds of the series to come in China (twice), Japan and Macau.

Ahead of the first Chinese round in Beijing, scheduled for early October, Tarquini was fifth in the overall standings on 121 points, 25 behind fourth-placed teammate Tiago Monteiro of Portugal.

You might think they would want to get away from it all during the mid-season break in the northern hemisphere summer, but not a bit of it. Castrol Honda WTCC veteran Gabriele Tarquini went instead to the place they call ‘the Green Hell’.

His season got off to a disastrous start in Morocco when a Friday practice accident wrecked his Honda and sidelined him for the rest of the weekend. So a podium finish just a week later in France was both a minor miracle and a great relief.

That’s the fearsome Nürburgring in Germany. Not the shortened circuit the Formula 1 cars use these days, but the old Nordschleife, the 22km circuit that snaked its way through the Eifel Mountains and was, in its heyday, the most severe test of any driver’s nerve and skill.

Honda’s other two representatives are 30-year-old Hungarian Norbert Michelisz, who drives for Zengo Racing, and Moroccan Mehdi Bennani, 31, of Proteam Racing. Michelisz took a fine podium in third place in the first race in Slovakia and bettered that with second in the first race in Argentina to lie sixth equal on 100 points at that stage. He was the other Honda man to try out ‘the Green Hell’, by the way.

These days the locals stage a series of endurance races, the VLN – it stands, roughly, for the Nürburgring Endurance Cup – on the Nordschleife. The Castrol Honda WTCC man was keeping his hand in during a two-month WTCC hiatus and having a useful look at a track which will grace next season’s WTCC calendar. Tarquini, 52, ‘borrowed’ a Honda Civic Type R in endurance racing specification from Honda Fugel Motorsport. And the experience was an eye-opener even for this seasoned campaigner. “During the VLN race I completed 16 laps,” said Tarquini, “but even with this experience I haven’t memorised it all. There are more than 70 corners, many of them blind, and very similar in appearance. So I definitely need more track time to learn them all!”

Meanwhile Bennani can point to his own first Honda podium, secured in third place in the second race in Russia, as a highlight of the season so far. But the gap to the flying French cars is closing, with a string of solid top-10 performances before the break causing Large Project Leader on the WTCC engine side Daisuke Horiuchi to express renewed optimism. “I am happy as this weekend the car showed overall improvement in both the chassis and the engine,” he said in Argentina before the break. “Our continuous development of the engine mapping is now paying off.”

So much so that the Hondas were due to carry extra Compensation Weight, as the series calls it, when the championship resumed in China. “The increased weight is of course a consequence of us getting closer to the competition and all the great work the team is delivering,” said Monteiro. “Because you try out different things that don’t always work in race configuration, in Argentina this progress didn’t translate into a better score. But that’s exactly why after the race on the Nürburgring we’re back testing on the Hungaroring and Slovakiaring to ensure we’re as prepared as we can be for the overseas campaign coming up.” “To be on the podium is such a great difference to the feeling last weekend in Marrakesh,” said Tarquini, “and the result is a tribute to the team for all the work to repair my car in time for this event. It was all the sweeter because that race at the Le Castellet track in the south of France was Tarquini’s 200th. Not until round five in Austria, and the second race of that weekend, was Gabriele back on the podium, again in second, backing that up with yet another runner-up placing when the series visited Moscow Raceway next time out. Earlier in the season it was Monteiro flying the Honda flag in the face of stiff French opposition in 2014. His first podium came in the second of two races at Le Castellet; he was then third and second in Hungary, but Tiago hasn’t been back in the top three since the third round.

39

NEVER MESS WITH A MARQUEZ... Honda-mounted brothers Marc and Alex Marquez were heading for a unique World Championship double as the two-wheeled circus prepared to roll into Australia for another Phillip Island spectacular. It seems like only yesterday that Honda star Marc Marquez was getting things all wrong at Phillip Island, miscounting the mid-race laps in a so-called ‘flag-to-flag’ race, mistiming his entry into pit lane to switch bikes and getting himself disqualified while his first MotoGP World Championship beckoned. No such worries in 2014: Marquez rode a restrained and disciplined race at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan to get the title business done and dusted one week before the Phillip Island event. Second place behind compatriot Jorge Lorenzo was enough to make the 21-year-old Spaniard World Champion for the second year in succession – his first two years in the premier class of the sport.

Meanwhile his younger brother Alex, aged just 16, had incurred the wrath of Aussie fans by knocking Townsville tear-away Jack Miller off his perch – literally – as World Championship leader in the Moto3 class for the first time in 2014. The two riders came together at Aragon’s infamous Turn 16 two rounds before Phillip Island, and another off-track mistake by Miller at Motegi two weeks later, with Marquez taking the race win, meant the younger brother would arrive at Phillip Island with a 25-point advantage – a full race victory, in effect – in hand and the Moto3 world title firmly in his sights. Marquez Senior was quick to express relief at finally clinching the crown in a season which started with 11 victories in the first 12 races then turned slightly chaotic, with mistakes in the two rounds before Motegi unsettling the young Spaniard. 40

I was very determined that I wanted to win the title here, at the home of Honda...

“The truth is that the mistakes over these last few races have made me appreciate winning the World Championship more,” he admitted, “because the first part of the season was very good but it seemed as if the title didn’t want to come. But I was very determined that I wanted to win the title here, at the home of Honda, and that is also very nice.” It wasn’t until round 11 of the 18-race series, in the Czech Republic, that Marquez tasted defeat for the first time in 2014. At Indianapolis Marquez scored his 10th straight win since season’s start. That put him in the illustrious company of Giacomo Agostini, who won the first 10 races of the 1970 season. But one salient fact should be borne in mind: the great Italian MV Agusta rider was 28 years old. In 1997, when Doohan took 10 straight victories for Honda from round four at Mugello to round 13 at the Circuit de Catalunya, the peerless Queenslander was already 32. Marc Marquez is 21… Ironically the first man to beat him this year was his Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa, shaking free from his fellow-Spaniard’s shackles at Misano in Italy to register his 26th MotoGP Prix victory, his first since Sepang last season.

“I didn’t plan the race this way,” said an elated Pedrosa, “but Jorge [Lorenzo] was so fast on the first two laps so I had to change my plan and push to the limit, then keep my rhythm to the end. This victory makes me feel so special,” he added, “because it’s been so tough until now.” Both Pedrosa and Marquez have re-signed with the Repsol Honda outfit for a further two seasons, which is pretty bad news for the rest of the MotoGP field. For now, though, Marquez had another title in view: the Moto3 crown for his younger sibling. “That is the intention!” he said after Motegi, which brought Alex his own third victory of a season in which he and his Estrella Galicia Honda simply grew stronger as the races came and went. “I will help him and give him all the encouragement possible. Above all we must take all the pressure we can off him, because leading the series means a lot of pressure. It will be important to make him calm, so that he can handle it well, but I know from experience that the season is very long and in three races anything can happen.”

JACK THE LAD MAKES THE BIG JUMP If Aragon saw him lose his Moto3 title lead, Townsville rider Jack Miller still had plenty to smile about as he contemplated his confirmed move to the MotoGP big time in 2015 to ride a Honda for Lucio Cecchinello’s highly-regarded squad.

for many years a Honda rider in the lightweight category of the World Championship, winning in Madrid in 1998. “We do believe that Jack will be a future strong performer in the premier class due to his undeniable talent, motivation and drive.”

Miller, born in 1985, is the first rider to vault from 250cc Moto3, which superseded the old 125cc category in 2012, straight up to MotoGP without making an in-between stop at the 600cc Moto2 class.

Miller had four Moto3 wins to his name before the Aragon mishap, although they all came in the first half of the season. He found himself 11 points behind Honda rider Marquez with four rounds remaining, with Alex’s teammate Alex Rins breathing down his neck in third place just seven points further adrift.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Miller, who started out on dirt bikes, won the MRRDA 125GP title in 2009 and then the German 125cc IDM championship two years later. “This is a very exciting project and a completely new challenge for us,” said Cecchinello, who was

Honda was locked in combat with KTM and bidding fair to win a first lightweight-class constructors’ world title since 2001 as they entered the closing stretch of another thrilling two-wheeled season.

Honda Pro Images

41

2014 AUSTRALIAN MOTORCYCLE GRAND PRIX THURSDAY 16 OCTOBER (Venue not open to general public)

1250 – 1325 MOTOX2 Session 2 (35 mins.) (DURING PIT LANE WALK)

0631 SUNRISE

1320 – 1330 RAAF ROULETTES AERIAL DISPLAY (10 mins.)

1000 – 1145

1335 – 1415

FIM TRACK SAFETY INSPECTION

1250 – 1325 VIP Village Pit Lane Walk 3 (35 mins.)

MOTO3 QUALIFYING (40 mins.)

1300 – 1400 BMW M LAPS (AGPC 6 GUESTS) & RACE TRACK SYSTEMS TEST

1430 – 1500

MOTOGP FREE PRACTICE 4 (30 mins.)

1400 – 1540 RIDERS TRACK FAMILIARISATION (SCOOTERS)

1510 – 1525

MOTOGP QUALIFYING 1 (15 mins.)

1550 – 1610 TRIBUTE TO BARRY SHEENE RIDE TO GP – Participants Parade Lap (20 mins.)

1535 – 1550

MOTOGP QUALIFYING 2 (15 mins.)

1605 – 1650

MOTO2 QUALIFYING (45 mins.)

1700 INTERNATIONAL PRE-EVENT PRESS CONFERENCE (MEDIA CENTRE) 1927 SUNSET FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER

1705 – 1735 MOTOX2 Session 3 (30 mins.) (DURING PIT LANE WALK) 1705 – 1735

Pit Lane Walk 4 (30 mins.)

1740 – 1750

Junior GP Challenge (10 mins.)

0629 SUNRISE

1800

QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE

0730 – 0745

International Safety Car Timing Laps (15 mins.)

1800 – 1830

BMW M LAPS (30 mins)

0745

NATIONAL TRACK INSPECTION

1930 Gates closed to public

0800 Gates open to public 0755 – 0815

SUPERSPORT PRACTICE (20 mins)

0825 – 0845

SUPERBIKE PRACTICE (20 mins)

0855 – 0915

SUPERSPORT QUALIFYING (20 mins)

0920

MEDICAL INSPECTION

0930

TRACK INSPECTION

1000 – 1040 MOTO3 FREE PRACTICE 1 (40 mins.) 1055 – 1140


1155 – 1240

MOTO2 FREE PRACTICE 1 (45 mins.)

1255 – 1315

SUPERBIKE QUALIFYING (20 mins)

1330 – 1400 MOTOX2 Session 1 (30 mins.) (DURING PIT LANE WALK) 1330 – 1400


1410 – 1450


1505 – 1550


1605 – 1650


1705 – 1720

SUPERBIKE RACE 1 (8 laps)

1720 – 1733 RAAF ROULETTES AERIAL DISPLAY (13 mins.) 1735 – 1750

SUPERSPORT RACE 1 (8 laps)

1755 – 1840

MEDIA LAPS (DORNA) TBC

1755 – 1825


1900 Gates closed to public 1938 SUNSET

1939 SUNSET SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER 0627 SUNRISE 0730 Gates open to public 0835 – 0850


0850


0905 – 0920

SUPERSPORT RACE 3 (8 laps)

0925 – 0930

Show n Shine Winners parade Lap (5 mins.)

0940 – 0955

SUPERBIKE RACE 3 (8 laps)

0955 – 1030


1000

MEDICAL INSPECTION

1010

TRACK INSPECTION

1040 –1100

MOTO3 WARM-UP (20 mins.)

1110 –1130

MOTO2 WARM-UP (20 mins.)

1140 –1200

MOTOGP WARM-UP (20 mins.)

1205 – 1230

VIP Village Pit Lane Walk 6 (25 mins.)

1205 – 1210

Supersport Podium Presentation (5 mins.)

1205 – 1225

MOTOX2 Session 4 (20 mins.) (DURING PIT LANE WALK)

1215 – 1220

Superbike Podium Presentation (5 mins.)

1225 – 1240

MOTOGP RIDERS’ PARADE

1245

PIT LANE OPENS

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER

1300 –1345 AUSTRALIAN MOTO3 GRAND PRIX (23 laps) (Press Conference immediately after podium)

0628 SUNRISE

1350

0730 – 0745


1400 PIT LANE OPENS

0750 – 0800


1420 – 1505 AUSTRALIAN MOTO2 GRAND PRIX (25 laps) (Press Conference immediately after podium)

0800 Gates open to public 0815 – 0835

SUPERSPORT RACE 2 (8 Laps)

0855 – 0910

SUPERBIKE RACE 2 (8 Laps)

0920

MEDICAL INSPECTION

0930

TRACK INSPECTION

1000 – 1040


1055 – 1140


1155 – 1240


Download Circuit map

1520 – 1530

TRACK INSPECTION

100 YEARS PARADE LAP

1525 – 1540 RAAF ROULETTES AERIAL DISPLAY (15 mins.) 1530

TRACK INSPECTION

1540

PIT LANE OPENS

1550 – 1552

National Anthem (2 mins.)

1600 – 1645 AUSTRALIAN MOTORCYCLE GRAND PRIX – MOTOGP (27 laps) (Press Conference immediately after podium)

Program subject to amendments as required

42

Travel

HOT SPOTS: QUICK TRAVEL TIPS FOR THAT WELCOME BREAK Need a break? Not sure where to go or what to do? We asked our regular travel writers to suggest some Roderick Eime, Cape Denison, East Antarctica

destinations for spring and summer…

Belinda Jackson

Jane Burton Taylor

Cruising Asia, especially Singapore and Japan. Bookings show people are either doing a round-trip cruise from Australia up to these ports, or flying up and cruising back – cheaper than hauling yourself to Europe, with lots of exotic destinations en route (expect Philippines, Vietnam, Medang in Indonesia on the itinerary).

Top of the list: hole up in an old town in Europe and have an immersive experience of life in another country. My first choice is Gallipoli, not the wartime destination but an idyllic old town on a tiny island on the southwest coast of the Salento in Puglia (the heel of the boot of Italy). Join local fishermen and soak up the sunshine on the promenade edge of the island, where vibrantly colourful local churches all face seaward.

‘capital-hopping’ is big...

Tours Central and Eastern Europe are gearing up to sizzle with Warsaw getting a lot of love. Tour ops say that ‘capital-hopping’ is big, and visitors want to wrap up a swag of capitals, linked by rail. Think Berlin, Prague, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow and Warsaw. We’re talking Triple Treat, Fabulous Four, Famous Five and Six of the Best.

Another option, same country (sorry it is my favourite!) is Ortigia in Siracusa, Sicily. It too is an ancient town on an island, so you can surround yourself in medieval streets and the daily rhythms of life; you can also still swim in crystal clean waters off the coast for much of the season.

Australia Back at home, it’s all about… Canberra! Yes, Canberra, with a swag of glorious new boutique hotels (lead by Hotel Hotel), New Acton café and dining precinct and its wealth of galleries and museums, both big and small.

For a more cultural urban experience, Florence is a city that is magical any time of year. In our summer, there are far fewer tourists, especially if you make your base on the Santo Spirito side of the Arno. Visit frescoes, churches, cloisters, museums, and local markets and, maybe you will be lucky enough to see the famed Renaissance city under snow.

For an inspiring Spring Summer holiday, I would pay my carbon offset dues for flying long haul, and head offshore. I’d either make a booking for a stint in a favourite haunt, or set off on one of my long-imagined travel daydreams. eetbtravel.com, Eastern Europe Budapest

For a more outdoors adventure, head to the north-western corner of Argentina, bordering Chile; hire a car and drive the startlingly beautiful back road from Salta to Jujuy. It is desert mountain country peppered by dramatic dips into lush green oases and peaceful overnight stays in old farmhouses with delicious local fare. It’s far-flung and memorable. Or spring: it’s a magical time to visit Athens and the Greek sights of Delphi and beyond. And while in Greece, you could take in a week of yoga and committed relaxing on Silver Island, one of the few privately-owned, public-access islands in the Mediterranean. It’s easy to start this daydreaming on where to go for holidays, but not so easy to stop…

iStock, mate cups, San Telmo, Argentina

iStock, La Boca, Argentina

Floriade, Canberra

Top of the daydream wish list: catch a plane to Buenos Aires, rent an apartment in an old quarter suburb like San Telmo and spend a few weeks learning the sensuous Argentinian tango. (It’s actually UNESCO-listed!) Argentines are warm and passionate so you can eat; drink (reds from Mendoza are seriously good); sleep decadently late and dance till dawn with the good-natured locals.

iStock, Ortigia, Italy

Diamond Princess Kagoshima

44

Rod Eime While your sun-loving friends are slapping the aloe vera on their lobster-red skin, head south to the far ends of the planet where the Antarctic animals are rehearsing their own brand of ‘happy feet’. Raucous penguin colonies throng with life while massive elephant seals lie about listlessly like overstuffed bratwurst. It’s a naturalist’s cornucopia full of birds and mammals of all shapes and sizes in, on and under the water. Voyages to the Antarctic Peninsula leave as regularly as clockwork from the world’s southernmost port, Ushuaia, at the toe of Argentina. Or, for the truly intrepid, deep Antarctic voyages depart from Cape Town, Hobart and Christchurch, following in the wake of Mawson, Shackleton and Byrd to the Ross Sea and Commonwealth Bay when the ice allows. And you don’t have to lash yourself to the mast anymore. Comfortable, state-of-the-art ships have computer-controlled stabilisers, fine dining rooms, room service, internet and even helicopters. It’s almost too easy. With all the attention on climate change and natural phenomenon, it’s good advice to go sooner rather than later. For independent advice and a wide range of options and operators, visit www.expeditionsonline.com Roderick Eime, Antarctica

...massive elephant seals lie about listlessly like overstuffed bratwurst. Roderick Eime, Antarctica

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6 – October 14 at 10:05pm – Edited

Fan Feature

David

1 – October 14 at 10:29pm

5 – October 14 at 10.07pm

My 1973 Honda Life. Mark

Anthony Tsu 1996 Honda Accord. It’s a car I have done a lot to, and have plenty more to do too.

Daniel 2001 Honda Integra Type R. Limited Edition with Yellow Recaros!

2010 Odyssey R B3 Mario

Fan feature Honda Facebook fans show us some of their favourite Honda moments and why they love their Honda.

5 – October 15 at 4:09am


Ryan Track Preped wide body s2k only half finished

Jim Does it have to be a car? How about my Honda E300 Generator circa 1967?


John Drove it around Australia still is a great car

1 – October 15 at 1:54am

JP His & Hers

love my pride and j

oy, Mathew

My 2014 Honda Super Charged Civic Si, Jason 46

HONDA MAG 57 If you have any feedback send us an email [email protected]

Honda Australia Pty. Ltd. ACN 004 759 611 ABN 66 004 759 611 95 Sharps Road, Tullamarine, Victoria, 3043. Freecall 1800 804 954 honda.com.au/cars