Honda to make clean diesels

Automotive News reports that Honda is on its way to putting clean diesel on the market. We should see a four-banger coming our way by 2009, with a V6 to follow (Honda didn't mention when). Honda folks say that the engines will meet U.S. emissions standards -- and not just any standards... a standard known as Tier 2 bin 5. It might sound like a wine quality category (grand cru, anyone?), but what the designation really means is that Honda's planning on making the diesels meet some really stringent standards imposed upon diesel vehicles

Bruno from AutoblogGreen tells us that Honda is relatively new to diesels, its first diesel developed totally in-house being released only in 2003. Kenichi Nagahiro, the company's chief engine designer and inventor of the celebrated VTEC engine, reportedly disliked diesels because of their smell and the racket they made. When asked to design Honda's first diesel he did so on one condition - that he could design it completely from scratch.

[Source: Automotive News and AutoblogGreen]