EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: New dawn at Honda R&D

President Yoshiyuki Matsumoto aims to invigorate Honda's technology and product-development organization with “full soul.”

Honda's new 10-speed automatic has not yet entered production, but it is already among the technologies that competitors are clamoring to benchmark when it enters the market. Designed and built in house, the new planetary transmission for front-drive vehicles, equipped with a torque converter, is as compact as Honda's incumbent 6-speed transaxle and is claimed to shift 30% faster and deliver a 14% improvement in acceleration.

It's an impressive piece of engineering, but the new 10-speed's greatest attribute may be that it exists at all.