Honda, where engineers rule
A few months back Honda was a sponsor of a "green" section on the Mother Boing. A few people got upset that we'd take money from a company that makes internal combustion engines.
It got my goat. Honda is one of my favorite companies. And this Forbes article goes a long way to explaining why:
Of all the bizarre subsidiaries that big companies can find themselves with, Harmony Agricultural Products, founded and owned by Honda Motor, is one of the strangest. This small company near Marysville, Ohio produces soybeans for tofu. Soybeans? Honda couldn't brook the sight of the shipping containers that brought parts from Japan to its nearby auto factories returning empty. So Harmony now ships 33,000 pounds of soybeans to Japan. An inveterate tinkerer, Honda also set up a center nearby to develop better soybean varieties and improve agricultural processes.Honda isn't currently sponsoring us, but I'd welcome them back in a heartbeat.This is from a company that sold 21 million internal combustion engines for cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers and boats last year. But there's nothing Honda hates more than waste, and there is nothing Honda likes more than an engineering problem. Indeed, how else to explain why Honda has studied the maddeningly evasive cockroach (for anticollision technology), decoded the rice genome (to increase crop yields and create more-productive crops for biofuels) and developed a robot that can get instructions by reading human brain waves (to learn how machines and humans can better coexist).
The article is actually from '06 and says that Honda had never had a mass layoff. I wondered if that was still true considering the present troubles. So far so good, at least in Ohio: they still aren't planning layoffs.
Engineers Rule [Forbes via MAKE]
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I would never compare Honda to other car companies.
Their R&D team(s) and engineeers surpass anything most companies, from automobiles to electronics, that you can find out there or in the US.
And they built the only car ('83 accord)I ever owned from 1988 to 1998 going strong with 360,000 miles on it.
WWHD?
Honda thinks about things so far forward that it's not even on other peoples scopes yet. I mean this is a company that is developing a car that runs on hydrogen from a solar powered separator in your garage.
They are constantly working on cutting down waste, making their engines more efficient and they are always looking to cut down their carbon footprint.
MORE companies should be like Honda...
Honda is one of the WORST companies working in the entire industry!
Their dealership use the highest level of deception and institutionalized lying of any company I've dealt with (I just bought a car and dealt with several each Ford, Hyndai, Smart, and Chevy dealerships in So. Cal AND 20-some different Honda dealerships).
Dealing with corporate was no better. They're evasive. They don't call back when they're wrong. They take no responsibility to their product deficiencies. They're an awful company that builds cars with crappy interior materials.
I had a del Sol for 12 years that had an on-board computer with defective firmware - as did/does every del Sol owner - that amongst other failures would cause smog checks to indicate a faulty O2 sensor - I had to get the state of CA involved every time I demanded a reimbursement from Honda for the financial burden. They never even tried to develop a properly working on-board computer to fix the problem.
I bought a Honda lawnmower in 2001. Beginning of spring 08, I changed a single (1) sparkplug. Other than that and gas it has ran and started with nary a hitch. They make a seriously good product.
As the proud owner of a Honda Insight, which still looks and acts like a car from a far-off EPCOT future despite being seven years old, I have to agree with Joel on this one.
I had a Honda Accord Wagon, built in nearby Marysville, Ohio, until just over a year ago. At 275,000 miles, it still got 30mpg on a trip to Detroit. The only reason I sold it? A friend needed a car, badly, and I knew it would be a good one for him. He loves it.
But while anecdotes are fun, the really neat thing was just how well thought out every last bit of the interior was. From the fold-flat tie down hooks to the little storage compartments to the fact that every control was within an arm's reach of the driver's seat. It was all so nice.
I've traded "up" to a car that cost 3x as much new, but the ergonomics aren't anywhere near what that Accord was. And servicing it (which I almost always do myself) is nowhere near as simple as the Honda.
The Accord Wagon was a singularly excellent car. I've also owned a CRX, and my wife had a Civic hatchback. The CRX was rusted to hell and back but refused to die. The Civic died in a Civic sandwich on Thunderbird bread.
#3 - yeah the Honda dealerships...at least in the San Jose area...
Yeah I'm talking to you Larry Hopkins, who lost my paystub *3* times, after the first time I realized my SSN was on it...Shame on me? Then they had the gall to try [repeatedly!] to charge me for the first payment when I had already paid it.
And I'm talking to you, Stevens Creek Honda, who almost refused to exchange a $100 headlamp wiring harness I had ordered 'cause it was for a '97 and I have a '98, then spent almost a week not installing the part, but you checked my brakes when I didn't need them checked. Luckily my regular mechanic (NOT THE DEALERSHIP) has a clue and got the work done in a day with little fuss or muss.
My Civic has been reliable, but has a number of annoying electrical issues I live with 'cause they don't stop me from driving to/from work. I'm not impressed by their engineering, but I guess that's what I get for an econobox.
Then there's my wife's 2001 Prius that the Stevens Creek Toyota dealership sold us in 2004 at a lower price listed in online that we didn't even know about. They've always treated my wife well and we've never had a complaint--they just replaced a high voltage battery a week ago, a $3,600 item, covered by warrantee, and they provided a rental for the week it took for the battery to show up.
According to consumers, they're both poorly rated for service, but maybe it's just the local dealerships that are like night and day.
I'm actually in some ways partial to Mazdas (well, only the RX-7 line), because that devotion to idiosyncratic (rotary) technology made for a good match with my lifelong Apple obsession.
However, I just couldn't get excited about the RX-8. It handled well, but it lacked something primal that my old '90 RX-7 convertible had in spades.
So I drove the Honda S2000, and fell in love. So light, so quick, so agile. It is like every day is track day. The convertible top is the most convenient one I have ever used. It's the closest thing to a pure driving experience I have ever encountered, including open-wheel track cars. On top of that, the lines are clean and understated, with a northern European restraint to the design. I'm coming up on 2 years of ownership, and the honeymoon still isn't over.
I think the RX-8 is a hell of a car (and who can't love a wankel?) but I just can't get over its looks. What an ugly car!
I could get over the RX-8's looks, but not the poor MPG...
...and that would be why GM is on the brink of bankruptcy, and Honda is not.
(Just one of many reasons, of course, but it's one of the most indicative stories I've seen.)
Agree with 10, and in addition I actually think the RX-8 looks way nicer than the RX-7 which lost it's (aesthetic) charm to me even before the 8 came out. I could get over the looks of the 7 though just for the sport of having a Wankel...
As for Hondas, I like a lot of what they do, and their cars seem to last forever, but I just absolutely hate driving them! I don't like their clutches at all, and the steering has felt loose on every one I've driven (and I've driven a wide variety from so many of my friends and family having them). I haven't driven an S2000, which might make me happier, but I doubt the clutch is much different from other Hondas I've driven...
Sadly, they still make cars.
You're right, of course. Of the (major) car companies, Honda is far and away the greenest, and most intelligent. They make some of the best vehicles, and their corporate culture is what the industry needs.
But, in the world as it is today, that industry as a whole is not green. It isn't even close.
It is comforting that Honda is doing all that research. It means that when they decide to become a real environmentally friendly company, they'll be able to make that switch over quicker than most.
But while they make cars like this, they are a net drain on the world, and I will continue to call their greenwashing greenwashing.
I would take an RX-7 over an RX-8 any day. Turbo car > NA. There are rumors of a new generation of RX-7 sometime around 2011.
I've owned 2 Honda motorcycles, an Acura Integra and my current CRV. While they don't actually walk on water (window winder issues, clunky bike xmissions) the Honda name adds huge cred for me.
The story of their F1 racing program is a fascinating example of success through sheer supercharged brainpower focused on a complex problem.
I actually preferred the NA 7's to the turbos that I have driven. The rotary tends to push all of the torque to the top end of the tach, and the turbo just exacerbates that. I have always wanted to drive one of the handful of supercharged 13b's out there, but never got the opportunity.
@12: The clutch on the s2k is a completely different beast from any other Honda I have driven. It's rather "notchy", which people either love or hate (for the first week, I was nervous about finding 6th gear, but it settled out after that). The steering is super-tight and even a bit heavy, with a slight understeer. After slinging it around some auto-cross, I actually feel like I've had a work out. And it really does scream around 8-9K, almost like a superbike.
I had a Honda self playing MIDI enabled accordion for a while. Loved it until it blew a bellows during the All Japan Polka Championships and they refused warrantee service claiming I'd used it improperly by programming in 16th note triplets.
Of course they aren't planning layoffs... it is so much easier to manage when you keep the unions out and pay your workers 1/3 of what GM or Ford pays!
I am sure GM or Ford could afford to plant soybeans or whatever if they managed to exploit loopholes in labor laws to keep their factories non-union as well.
Oh, I forgot, we are only supposed to support progressive institutions like unions when they don't advertise on Boing Boing! Nice fluff piece guys!
#3 & some others: car dealerships are car dealerships, no matter the brand, they'll try to cheat, scam, and swindle you for that bottom line profit which would affect only their particular dealership. I have a Corolla, and thankfully the local Toyota dealership is very helpful and honest, even when a certain service is not the cheapest with them. It's just a matter of luck I guess with dealerships.
#18: I think I'm going to need some PROOF from you there.
As for me, I had a '95 Accord all through out college. It had a myriad of problems, but mostly because I didn't take care of it. Yet it still ran... up until last year when it was stolen from my apartment parking lot... and the thieves crashed it off the NJ Turnpike =(. Although, one of the problems was that the odometer was stuck on 105,000 miles, even though it should've been well over 200k, so I actually got a nice little check from the insurance company for what it was worth.
Despite all the problems, which were mostly electrical and non-engine related (window motors were dying, AC took forever to kick in, the odometer being stuck, gas gauge read less gas than what the tank actually has, some outside rusting above rear wheel wells), it drove like a dream... Let's just say if I was in a different car, a few near accidents would've been unavoidable, and a couple of actual accidents would've been alot worse.
#3: "I had a del Sol for 12 years"--kind of puts the rest of your post in the sort of perspective that you may not have intended.
#18: Honda pays its workers "1/3 of what GM or Ford pays"? And yet its cars are more reliable? That's worked out really well for GM and Ford, hasn't it?
@16, I always forget to keep watching posts I've commented on! But if you see this, thanks for the response re: the S2000. Sounds pleasant, I might reconsider that machine...
I have worked for honda (along with half of Marysville) and it is without a doubt the worst job I have ever had. Employees are promoted based on clock number has nothing to do with work experience or business education. Employees on the line are worked like slaves, while management sits in the air conditioned office all day eating potato chips. The pay scales are completely skewed. I had only been there a couple months and made under $12.00 an hour. Some of the management make over $100,000 annually, and I would be surprised if some of them even hold a high school diploma. As far as the layoffs go "their" employees don't have anything to worry about but the thousand or so temps that work there do. Or they will just move you to a plant location that is so miserable you quit. So if your looking to be sexually harassed, be managed by morons, and work in filthy conditions honda is just the place for you.