"The Honda Civic outsold the Ford Focus and Chevy Cobalt last month."

As if that's a surprise.

Thank you Honda for generously creating jobs for Americans!!! We are truly in your debt, Japan.

Jee'sus, is that the front of the Civic in the USA?
Looks like a hamster. Gone with the elegance... Sad...

Businesswise, it makes sence.
With the $ at 1.58, US might actually beat China in integral cost and become an exporting country again. Well done, George!
We'll soon have american street sweepers and maids in China...

Honda continues to produce cars that people want. Many of them built right here in the USA. It is a business relationship however, and about making money. If it was cheaper for Honda to make these vehicles in Japan, they would be. I love my Civic, 40 MPG non hybrid.

We should take the Civic, bring it to our domestic manufacturer's and say, copy this the best you can. What ever the result is, it would be better than what they are currently making.

Bill O:

domestics have used small cars as simply a fuel offset for the larger trucks and suv's and at no time considered that you could make a profitable small car

if you were an engineer and got assigned to the small car team it was a kiss of death

Honda doesn't have to put up with the UAW. That's why they're moving production here.

@CCL:

Uh oh, you may have stirred a hornets nest with that comment. I do agree, but last time unions were brought up here it wasn't a pretty picture.

As I read this, the banner ads on this page are from Ford, show a photo of the Fusion, and declare, "When it comes to quality, Ford is in a dead heat with Toyota and Honda" The disclaimer reads, blah blah blah "...at three months of service in three surveys..."

Wow, Ford, your survey claims you can keep up with Toyota and Honda for 90 days. Give yourself a hand, that's quite an accomplishment. I am no financial strategist or guru, but from what I know, most leases and loans are longer than 90 days. So you will keep paying on a car with no foreseeable residual value, and the damn thing will probably crap out on you.

Honda will continue to make quality, ugly cars while Toyota continues to make quality, overpriced, boring cars while the big three try to make a car as good as a 10 year old import.

Thanks for throwing us a bone, Honda. Maybe the big three could hire the workers from Honda, Toyota, Subaru and Mazda's US plants to come work for them and try to build a quality piece of crap.

To paraphrase Tommy Boy (in the movie of the same name) "I can shit in a box and put a guarantee on it. What'll you have? A guaranteed piece of shit."

Darn unions mess a lot of things up....

If they actually did "real" work and didn't threaten companies with walk outs and strikes, we might be better off...

@Gary - I wanted to be the first to start the union bashing!!!

@andrew

besides rick wagoner, the union is the second biggest value destroyer at GM

Let me get a comment in before the torrent of pro/anti union comments:

This is good news for the US, they need the jobs. This is also good news for Honda, the US is becoming cheaper to operate in all the time (thank you Bush). Too bad Canada's economy is still pretty good so none of the jobs are going to the plant(s) in Ontario.

Ok, I'll get in on the union bash, IMO the UAW is to blame for all of the domestic auto problems. I'm not talking partly to blame, but probably 95% of the reason. Working in a car plant is not any harder than working at McDonalds and making 5-10x the wage is ridiculous. Fuck overpaid unions.

Tommy Boy Imposter

Please do me a favor and go suck Japanes cock some were else. The cars may be assembled here in the States, but the parts for them are being made in Japan. That's where the reall jobs come from MAKING THE PARTS not ASSEMBLING THE CAR!!!

@Tommy Boy:

Agree that corporate profits go to Japan, however jobs are created here stimulating the local economy and producing ancillary support jobs and services that support the factory. (personally, I would rather see a factory in use than dormant) . Any car company uses parts from a variety of vendors and sources. There is no one company that uses all parts from one country.

Honda is in a fortunate position that it has desirable small cars and the market is ripe for efficient vehicles right now.

people it is an international market. Your GM or Ford isn't exactly 100 percent made in the USA anyways. not just that they have factories all over the world. stop thinking like you just got out of your cave. Wake up and embrace global ecomonics.

I think Unions where useful at some point in history, but now they're just hindering progress. I can barely name a car made by the big 3 I want to drive.

I'm waiting for the Chevy Volt to materialize, but they don't have a good track record for eco friendly car. The EV1 was cool, why can they just reload the program into their pc and improve it's battery pack and a few other things and call it a EV2. why beat around the bush? they had something great. now they want to toss a carrot in front of us with this fuel cell crap.

Ok sorry this has nothing to do with the civic, but I do have a civic hybrid which gets aboug 48mpg on average. Very well built, and is far far improved compared to my 89 civic and my 92 civic.

Just a quick note out to the union bashers:

One thing that many statistics either gloss over, or people don't realize, is that the "hourly cost" numbers that detail "wages and benefits" also include the costs associated with retiree benefits that still must be paid. So, if stats show that Big 3 UAW people make $75/hour, while Honda/Toyota are in the $40/hour range, it's not to say that current UAW employees are actually getting the benefit of the full $75.

It does mean that it's costing the Big 3 $75 per current worker hour, but that's because of the Union's prior deals for pensions/health care that cost the company for people who are no longer working. Asian manufacturers never entered into those sorts of deals and thus don't have the legacy costs to fold into current expenses.

While you can hate on UAW workers for making much more than minimum wage, having nearly guaranteed jobs, etc., it's not completely fair to say that they make 10 times minimum wage. Things like the lack of corporate competitive mobility that some of their contract stipulations cause and the ability of strikes to cripple production are another story.

I'm personally of the opinion that auto workers should be paid between $15 and $25 and hour depending on their job. Maybe some of the higher end supervisors should be in the $30's somewhere.

"Honda doesn't have to put up with the UAW. That's why they're moving production here."

Aint that the truth. Signs that the fat UAW must have bled Detroit pretty damn dry are becoming obvious, because now they are starting to hit up east coast casino workers to unionize. Not so easy for Detroit, who has the whole automotive world to compete with now.

Freakin' vampires is what they are now. This isn't the industrial age, and little or no chance of getting your hand mangled by casino chips or playing cards really exists. Why else does United Auto Workers need gaming facilities ? Just $$, nothing else.

Anyway, I have stock in Toyota and Honda so part of their big, fat profits are flowing back to America through my pockets. Ford, GM, and Chrysler can go bankrupt as far as I'm concerned. Sad that tens of thousands of Mexicans would lose their jobs though.

I love how North American's eat their own.

Guy can't even get support from his neighbor for making a decent wage? No wonder the rich get richer. The middle class keep kicking each others ass when one of their own starts getting a little ahead of the other. Why do you hate to see others succeed? Are you really that much better than the guy building your car? You think your color is better than his? Tell me, what it is because I don't get it.

Unions create an environment of entitlement, like socialism, communism. They are a creation of the liberal mindset. Unions eliminate rewards based on merit and productivity. In this age of stiff competition the market should dictate wages and benefits, not a overfunded, underachieving union. I am a IT professional without college degree making over 40. an hour + benefits so I know what can be done with hard work and determination and unions had nothing to do with it.
TO Subpra:
Open dialog and exchanging ideas is hardly "North America eating their own"

Tommy Boy

And investing money in Japan to make your own pockets bigger helps America how?

@426Hemi

Because I stimulate the economy by spending that money on gas from the Middle East and cool gadgets from China. Try to keep up here.