Soichiro Honda founded his Honda company in 1948. Focusing on developing cheap transportation, Honda strapped an engine to a standard bike and created a very efficient means of transportation. This ingenuity was the start of the Honda empire. Ten years later, Honda would reach American land and establish the American Honda Co.

The Honda brand became synonymous with reliable and innovative engineering. The company’s motorcycle division registered a tremendous sales increase and during the 1970’s and Honda became the world’s largest motorbike maker.

Its production of cars however, that had started during the 60’s was rather slow. Honda cars failed to impress the average American driver. The reason: having been designed for the Japanese market, the small-sized cars were a huge contrast to the large vehicles favored by Americans.

In an effort driven by marketing research, Honda launched a larger vehicle, the American-oriented civic. Although still small compared to the US-made cars, the Civic was a hit.

In mid 70’s, Honda would release the Accord and it quickly became a popular model. By 1982, Honda achieved something remarkable: they were the first Japanese company to open a plant on American soil. There first assembly line was built in Maysville, Ohio and three other plants later followed in Lincoln, Alabama and another in Timmonsville, South Carolina. The latest Honda factory opened in 2006 in Tallapoosa, Georgia.

After building the brand in the States, Honda found it hard to compete in the luxury car segments against the veteran American producers and European imports so it introduced its own line of luxury vehicles in 1986. Known as Acura, Honda was the first Japanese car maker to do so but was soon followed by Nissan and Toyota which have launched their own separate luxury lines, Infiniti and Lexus.

The company’s latest car-engineering improvements are primarily fuel and safety oriented, the latter having become one of the major criteria in car buying choices especially in the United States. The company’s involvement in developing new cleaner vehicles has finally paid off with the recent release of the FCX Clarity. Powered by hydrogen cells, the car does not emit any pollutants, the only by products being water and oxygen.

When it’s not developing new fuel technology, Honda is busy with being the largest engine producer on Earth, with over 14 million engines manufactured per year.

Thanks to: Urse Honda – Fine Used Cars