As unprecedented levels of pollution choked the nation’s largest cities in the early 1970’s, a group of automobile engineers secretly toiled to develop an engine technology that would significantly reduce pollution from automobiles. Honda’s new environmental short film, “Never Ending Race,” tells the story of Honda’s industry-leading efforts to reduce vehicle emissions, and how its successful technology demonstration for the state of California led to more stringent exhaust emissions standards, eventually transforming the automobile industry’s approach to automobile emissions controls. Today, as a result, smog-forming emissions from new vehicles are one one-thousandth of 1970 levels[1]. Watch the film.
“Never Ending Race” is the third film in the award-winning Honda Environmental Short Film Series, which highlights the initiatives of Honda associates to fulfill the company's vision for reducing its environmental impact and creating a more sustainable future.
The short film reminds viewers that urban air pollution has been a pressing social concern in the U.S. for nearly four decades. In the 1970s, Los Angeles came to symbolize America’s air pollution problem, experiencing over a hundred stage 1 smog alerts in just one year.[2] A public outcry over dangerous smog levels led to the passage of the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1970, which Honda answered with its now-legendary CVCC engine in the 1975 Civic, making Civic the first vehicle to meet the federal standards without the need for costly and complex catalytic converter technology.