Honda's Automobile History
Honda's automotive manufacturing ambitions can be traced back to 1963, with the Honda T360, a Kei truck built for the Japanese market. This was followed by the two-door roadster, the Honda S500 also introduced in 1963. In 1965, Honda built a two-door commercial delivery van, named the Honda L700. Honda's first four-door sedan was not the Honda Accord, but the air-cooled, four-cylinder, gasoline-powered Honda 1300 which was introduced in 1969. The Civic was a hatchback that gained wide popularity internationally, but it wasn't the first two-door hatchback built by Honda. That was the Honda N360, a Kei car that was adapted for international sale as the N600. The Civic, which appeared in 1972 and replaced the N600 also had a smaller sibling that replaced the air-cooled N360, called the Honda Life, which was water-cooled.
The Honda Life represented Honda's efforts in competing in the kei car segment, offering sedan, delivery van and small pick-up platforms on a shared chassis. The Life Step Van had a novel approach that, while not initially a commercial success, appeared to be an influence to vehicles with the front passengers sitting behind the engine, a large cargo area with a flat roof and a liftgate installed in back, and utilizing a transversely installed engine with a front-wheel-drive powertrain.
As Honda entered into automobile manufacturing in the late 1960s where Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota and Nissan had been making cars since before WWII, Honda instilled a sense of doing things a little differently than its Japanese competitors. Its mainstay products like the Accord and Civic (with the exception of its USA-market 1993–97 Passport which was part of a vehicle exchange program with Isuzu (part of the Subaru-Isuzu joint venture)) have always employed Front-wheel drive powertrain implementation, which is currently a long-held Honda tradition. Honda also installed new technologies into their products, first as optional equipment, then later standard, like anti-lock brakes, speed-sensitive power steering, and multi-port fuel injection in the early 1980s. This desire to be the first to try new approaches is evident with the creation of the first Japanese luxury chain Acura, and was also evident with the all-aluminum, mid-engined sports car, the Honda NSX, which also introduced variable valve timing technology, which Honda calls VTEC.
The Civic family is a line of compact cars developed and manufactured by Honda. In North America, the Civic is the second-longest continuously running nameplate from a Japanese manufacturer; only its perennial rival, the Toyota Corolla, introduced in 1966, has been in production longer. The Civic, along with the Accord and Prelude, comprised Honda's vehicles sold in North America until the 1990s, when the model lineup was expanded. Having gone through several generational changes, the Civic has become larger and more upmarket, and it currently slots between the Fit and Accord.
Honda's first hybrid electric vehicle was the 1999 Insight. The Civic was first offered as a hybrid in 2001, and the Accord followed in 2004. In 2008, the company launched the Clarity, a fuel cell car. In 2008, Honda increased global production to meet the demand for small cars and hybrids in the U.S. and emerging markets. The company shuffled U.S. production to keep factories busy and boost car output while building fewer minivans and sport utility vehicles as light truck sales fell
Its first entrance into the pickup segment, the light-duty Ridgeline, won Truck of the Year from Motor Trend magazine in 2006. Also in 2006, the redesigned Civic won Car of the Year from the magazine, giving Honda a rare double win of Motor Trend honors. It is reported that Honda plans to increase hybrid sales in Japan to more than 20% of its total sales in the fiscal year 2011, from 14.8% in the previous year.
Honda currently builds vehicles in factories located in Japan, the United States of America, Canada, China, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
