It was tough to sit through the two Honda press conferences today. Both the redesigned Acura TSX and the Honda Fit have been stars on the Internet for seemingly months now. The Fit was introduced in Japan last fall where it is Honda's top-selling model. And various TSX pictures and the press release have been rattling around online for a while now. So the introductions here have been awkward. With very little adieu, out rolled each car. Loud music was playing...and kept playing...and just when you thought it was done, played some more. It was as if Honda was trying to build excitement in the press corps that never quite happened. Further, the Honda executive doing the presentation jumped directly from reinforcing that Honda is an engineering driven company to announcing that Acura was the preferred vehicle of the W hotel chain. Even engineering-driven companies wind up with marketing relationships with boutique hotel chains, I guess. It's a bit of a shame that the TSX and Fit were received with a collective yawn here. The Fit has some solid improvements?available ESC, driving position improvements, easier folding back seats. And the very, very reliable TSX outsold Acura's initial forecasts, providing nimble handling if not a ton of power. (The new car is slightly bigger but doesn't appear to deviate far from that recipe.) Maybe the general ennui was caused by the TSX and Fit looking an awful lot like the cars they replaced. That makes sense for the distinctive Fit, but the TSX looks like a lot of other cars melted together, namely the Euro-Accord with the latest Acura grille. As I wrote about Hyundai, I'm all for Honda's making solid practical improvements in redesigned cars. What else would you expect from a manufacturer that bills itself as an engineering-based company? And with a Honda Odyssey in my driveway, I'm pretty far from advocating making buying decisions based on styling alone. But in a world of sleek-looking Hyundai coupes, and a redesigned Nissan Maxima and Infiniti FX that have distinctive (if controversial) front ends, I wonder what Honda loses in sales by playing it safe. ?Tom Mutchler See the 2008 New York auto show coverage.