Word: honda
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...national and international rivalry may bring car shoppers lower prices and a better selection of products, but it also threatens to put an ugly dent in Detroit's profit statements. Honda's sudden rise is an indication of how tough the renewed competition will be. The company has added a formidable new reputation for quality automaking to the traditional Japanese manufacturing virtues of durability, faithful service and moderate prices. This year a survey of more than 23,000 buyers of 1985 cars in the U.S. by J.D. Power & Associates, a California consulting firm, showed that Honda enjoyed the country...
...heady time indeed for a firm that Merrill Lynch, the brokerage house, calls "one of the most unusual and creative of all Japanese industrial concerns." Started with 20 employees in 1948 by an inventive garage mechanic, Soichiro Honda (now 79 and retired), the company took only twelve years to claim the title of the world's leading motorcycle and motor- scooter maker. Honda introduced its first car in the Japanese market in 1963, and now manufactures an array of products that range from outboard motors to snowblowers and lawn mowers. Its profits zoomed to a record $532 million...
...Honda started carving out its share of the U.S. auto market during the energy-short 1970s. One of its first models, the tiny Civic, which was introduced in 1973, posted fuel efficiency of 29 m.p.g. and sold for as little as $2,150 (current base price: $5,749). The company soon broadened its demographic appeal by introducing the larger, upscale Accord (currently $9,389) in 1976 and the Prelude ($11,592) in 1979. Intense demand for the cars prompted Honda's serendipitous decision to construct its pioneering Ohio plant, a complex now capable of producing 220,000 autos annually...
...Honda's rivals are only beginning to catch up. Nissan began building autos last year in Smyrna, Tenn., and Toyota is constructing a plant in Georgetown, Ky., that will start assembling vehicles in 1988. But Honda is not standing still either. The automaker began building engines at a separate plant near Marysville in July 1985. It is now gearing up a second Marysville assembly line that will increase the factory's U.S. production to 360,000 cars annually...
...Honda owes its jackrabbit start in the U.S. market at least partly to a corporate culture that fosters flexibility and innovation. The company operates with an openness that is rare in the world of Japanese business, where consensus and conformity are the rule. To boost communication, Honda has done away with executive lunch rooms and private offices. At Marysville, for example, egalitarianism prevails: all Honda employees, right up to Shoichiro Irimajiri, president of Honda's American manufacturing division, wear white coveralls with their names stitched in red lettering above the right breast pocket...