And this may be a reason why they’re moving: http://www.uawhonda.com/ Looks like the Alliston workers are joining the goddamn UAW. I would guess the Alabama facility isn’t UAW, but I could be wrong. Down with the UAW.

What team should we route for: the one that fires workers or the one that hires them?

Really, what is up with that skirt packagae and wing? Can that car look any more pathetic? But if the Focus can sell, why not this?

Just as Ford and GM are about to cut more jobs, Honda is actually saving American jobs… Go figure.

Need4SSpeed, Honda is not only saving jobs: it is creating more jobs. Global economy in action.

Yeh, what is with this trend Impulsive? 25 years ago we probably all figured most cars today would look something from the Jetsons. Now it seems sales are proportional to how nondescript the design is. Which is probably why the Civic in the photo looks so goofy. The lipstick on the pig theory, I suppose.

johnnycanuck, as attractive or unattractive Civic is it sells in droves. It was selling from the first day and now there are waiting lines for one in my neck of the woods. After all, 35 mpg, comfortable seating for 4 (5 small frames), decent handling, and the loaded car with sunroof for under 20 USD.

20K USD

xyunya: I’m surprised Honda doesn’t try the Civic Wagon variant one more time. They probably don’t want to pilfer sales away from the CRV but there’s probably a good audience out there who really don’t need AWD, just the space in the back so Rover doesn’t trash the upholstery.

The pictured car is the Mugen Si. I.E. dealer rice. Limited production… high price… gawdy looks… and not any faster than a “regular” Si.

I’ve seen a few around… they’re nothing special.

Atleast this is one good thing created by the weak dollar.
The downside is the losts jobs at big 3 actually paid a decent wage while Honda pays considerably less. The way things are going we might all eventually be working for Tata and Hyundai at $15/hr.
Also I feel really bad for anyone who has to stare at Ridgelines all day, I fully expect an self-indulged eye gouging epidemic to sweep AL.

Hopefully one day we will all have no choice but to work for those ever so grateful Japanese companies.

this article is just to get us into more arguments. It seems almost all the news LLN has been posting lately is just to entertain us, no matter how true their contents are I’ve barely heard any “enthusiast” news in the past few months.

johnnycanuck, the original CR-V was ‘92 Civic wagon with all wheel drive. Honda could not give it away. Actually you should see how funky 5 door hatch in England looks. They have them with diesels and they quick and efficient. The sad part even in Europe Civic has that insane spaceage interior. I think you are absolutely right: little hatch or wagon would sell well in todays market. Look at Matrix/Vibe – they sell, I see them all over now. It is like like late ’70’s all over.

where’s hemiroadrunner? i’m waiting for inane comments on how the import humpers are ruining america. what’s that? honda is creating american jobs and opening manufacturing plants in the states while ford and gm are cutting loose workers and idling or closing plants?

so, who’s better for america?

^ well just because they are expanding and happen to be opening jobs in the U.S which is a good thing contrary to what the Big Three are doing, Honda and Toyota are in a different situation than GM and Ford, I actually wrote a paper on this a few years ago in college explaining how the Japanese companies such as Honda and Toyota are younger than the big three and right now they are at their peak or prime, kind of the life of a human, you grow, reach your peak, and then start to decline such is the business cycle and with age, 40 years down the road, companies like Toyota and Honda will be facing some of the problems that GM and Ford are facing right now. Just like the Japanese don’t have as huge of a legacy of retirees that GM and Ford have, which billions of $$ go to right there.

Need4SSpeed, I haven’t read your college paper, but Toyota is not a young company. Toyota has been building cars for almost 70 years, not quite long as Ford, but not a youngster. Honda is much younger. Nobody knows what problems Japanese car companies will be having in the future or not having. With all due respect, that level of clairvoyance is not available to anyone outside of insane asylum.

Predicting the future is like putting Armour-All on your tires. It looks good until the first rain, then much like safe sex your wheels become just another piece of burnt rubber. The plight of the North American auto industry was a no brainer. How could Detroit not have noticed after about the 4th generation of the Civic that:
A) the model name had not changed twice
B) sales had steadily increased &
C) the great manipulator aka ‘the press’ were all over this like white on rice.

All this was about as transparent as which guy was going to get killed first on an original Star Trek episode.

@ autonut

“Nobody knows what problems Japanese car companies will be having in the future or not having. With all due respect, that level of clairvoyance is not available to anyone outside of insane asylum.”

That’s not entirely true. The Japanese manufacturers face a massive decline in domestic auto sales in the next 5-10 years in their homeland. They’re still creating jobs, building plants and doing R&D, but the Japanese government is making/has made it extremely difficult to sell cars in Japan. Young people now are more interested in cellphones and gadgets. The mass public transit systems throughout Japan are making automobiles an unnecessary luxury than a want or necessity. I spoke to a friend about all of this after reading a recent article and he said it’s true. He lives 20 minutes from the garage his car is stored, which he only uses on Saturdays and Sundays to run errands, mostly. Ironically, he’s a 22 year old kid who works for Polyphony Digital. Go figure.

^^^ Indeed, if you’ve been to Japan, you’d agree.

The reason for the shift of production to the US is because USD devaluation and manufacturing costs are going down compared to Canada. Honda is trying to save money – whether it creates or loses jobs in the process is secondary and unintentional.

This is how the recession in Canada begins – Honda is just an example of production shifts to the US and downed export. Impulsive and Johnnycanuck, what do you think?

I heard on the radio this morning, Deanster, that it is only eastern Canada where the R word is threatening to rear its ugly head. Likely because, as you imply, that’s where the greater manufacturing base is in this country. Much to the contrary, things are just flying along over here. In fact our provincial legislature just rammed through 7 bills yesterday before closing shop for the summer including that wonderful new carbon tax. Gotta love what goes on in an overwhelming majority government now, don’t you. If the same thing had happened on your side of the prairies well… who am I kidding. We’re all so apathetic probably nothing much would have been said either.

‘Deanster’, generally speaking, correct. Keep in mind, Honda’s increased production of the Civic which has allowed them to transfer production of slower selling “trucks” to the U.S. (benefitting from your points mentioned), so nothing has been lost in Canada.

I don’t see Honda losing ANY Canadian production, regardless of how low the US dollar falls … too much demand for their cars … if anything, Honda will expand to the US but won’t shut down existing production here, we’re far too good at quality assembly.

This morning I read about Canada’s GDP # being NEGATIVE … one more similar # and we are “officially” in recession. Like ‘johnny’ mentioned, it is confined to the Ontario economy and the disparity between regional growth/decline will grow in the coming years. Lowering taxes, personal and business, is the only way to reverse the coming pain.

Autonut, yeah Toyota has been building automobiles for almost 70 years but what I meant and what I should have stated a little clearer is that they didn’t start selling globally or at least in the U.S until what was it? The late 1950’s which would put it in the U.S market for under 60 years. And yeah you can’t predict the future but you can pretty well predict trends, you can predict that when the market is good it’s not giong to stay good forever, eventually it will fall. Basic economics can tell you that. But again does Toyota or Honda have millions of retirees that they have to support like GM or Ford does to which they pay billions to each year? No. You may not be around, heck I may not be either but I can predict that Toyota will start to have the same problems (not all of course) that GM and Ford are going through now. Also rds130 gave some pretty good reasons also as to how Toyota will hurt in the future.