Word: honda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...good many of the new names due to appear in showrooms will be carried by subcompacts being introduced to do battle with the smaller, zippier imports, such as the Honda Civic and Volkswagen Rabbit, whose sales are booming. GM's current entry in this field, the trim little Chevette (base price: $3,225, v. $3,499 for a Rabbit), was introduced in 1975, but Chrysler now plans to follow with the country's first front-wheel-drive subcompacts, the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon. Ford, too, will offer a front-wheel-drive subcompact, the Fiesta, though...
...makers are France's Motobecane, which has 5 million of its Mobylettes on foreign roads (including Bermuda, as legions of U.S. tourists have discovered); Austria's Steyr Daimler Puch; and Holland's Batavus. All have set up U.S. subsidiaries and are racing to open moped dealerships. Honda, the big Japanese maker of motorcycles and cars, as yet has no bona fide moped on U.S. roads, but it and other Japanese motorcycle makers are reportedly gearing up for American sales...
Easy Laws. Honda led an earlier attempt to put the U.S. on two wheels. In the mid-'60s it sold lightweight, brightly colored machines that helped strip motorcycling of its greasy, violent image. But sales fell off, largely because state laws turned ownership of the little bikes into a hassle. The current moped madness was touched off by new laws in 31 states that class the machines as bicycles or "motorized bicycles" instead of motorcycles. Result: moped owners in about half of those states do not have to register their bikes. In many states they do not even need...
Spearheading the import drive are the Japanese automakers. Toyota's models are the biggest sellers, Datsun's second and Honda's third. Volkswagen, once the undisputed leader in auto imports, now ranks fourth-even though sales were up 80% in May over a year earlier. Part of the reason for the imports' jolting success is that they are generally small compacts, lean on fuel and relatively comfortable to drive. One senior Detroit auto executive wondered last week "how the foreigners can produce that much value for the money." Some industry analysts think that foreign-car sales...
...hottest car in the U.S. today," says New York City Auto Dealer Frank Silvestry of the Honda Accord. Many experts would agree. Pertly styled, carefully engineered, with front-wheel drive and able to travel up to 48 miles on a gallon of gas, the Japanese-built Accord practically sells itself, and buyers around the country are willing to wait three to eight months for delivery. The Accord, however, is only the most spectacular example of the massive assault on the U.S. being made by imported cars, which now account for 21% of all new autos sold in the American market...