Economy

Motor Trend gives Honda Civic ‘Car of the Year’ honor

November 22, 2005 ⋅  E-Mail Article ⋅  Print Article ⋅ Post a comment

Honda Civic has received the Motor Trend Car of The year Award. While I take no great satisfaction in announcing this news, I do take good lessons learned from a proud company. Honda sticks to the ideal that it sells where it manufactures, their main manufacturing is in Japan and America, and their main selling areas are Japan and America. American companies such as Ford, GM, and Chrysler, stumble over each other trying to ship jobs to cheaper countries to build a more profitable vehicle.

Honda has focused its resources on building a sound vehicle; their vehicles are reliable and very rarely need major service in the first few years. Honda builds customer loyalty by providing employment to its market base, their American counterparts continuously lay off their market base and employ low wage help in countries where the employees cannot afford to buy their product. There is never talk of outsourcing in the Honda Corporation, they hire the best domestic talent and expect results.

Many American companies state they cannot find good talent in their marketing bases and they must ship the work out in order to meet demand, why has Honda not encountered this problem in America? American companies try to rely on our feeing of patriotism by telling us “ Buy American”, yet they are turning right around and building in Mexico, China, India, and Korea, then they slap their American made hood ornament on the vehicle as it gets delivered to the showroom. Honda is constantly expanding in the United States while GM, and Fords is constantly contracting.

I support GM, Chrysler, and Ford, I have owned at least one model of each type, but I feel they can take a lesson learned from Honda. I believe they should focus more on building back up their market place in America by employing more workers, at a fair wage for both the employee and the company. I also believe they need to focus on their domestic talent and quit outsourcing all of their engineering and development. Focus on building a good vehicle not a cheap one. I never hear Honda discussing how much it costs to build a vehicle, or how much money they will make this quarter or the next. What I do hear is how they want to build the best. They understand that if the build a good car and have a healthy amount of employees the rest will take care of itself.

Let’s hope that this time next year I can write about one of the big three taking home the Motor Trend Car of the Year

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