Word: honda
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...foreign auto in the U.S.? Since 1975 the titleholder has been Japan's Toyota, but maybe not for much longer. After a dingdong sales battle, auto-industry experts forecast that by year's end, U.S. car buyers will have crowned another best-selling make. The new champion: Honda, a product from a company that little more than a decade ago was more famous for its motorcycles and motor scooters than for its automobiles. The spunky Japanese car manufacturer, which sold only 9,500 cars in the U.S. during its first season in 1971, expects to sell...
...Honda's rapid acceleration is significant not only for buyers of foreign cars but for the domestic U.S. auto industry, which is expected to produce about 8.7 million cars this year. At a time when American auto firms are fighting hard to regain ground lost earlier to Japanese and other foreign manufacturers, Honda has established a strong U.S. foothold with its shrewd decision in 1977 to build an assembly plant in Marysville, Ohio. Honda's expansion is also a sign that Japanese manufacturers are gearing up their competitive engines to maintain and enlarge their market share...
...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...