Honda's small cars for NA soon to rival VW in build quality.

Blind_Io

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Honda has just announced it will build a new assembly plant in a suburb of Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico. This will be Honda's eighth assembly plant in North America and third in Mexico, and is being built for the production of "fuel-efficient subcompact vehicles" for the Mexican and North American markets.

The new plant will cost Honda $800 million to build, be completed in 2014 and add 3,200 jobs to the region when its operational. While we don't yet know what it will build, the plant's estimated annual capacity will be 200,000 units, which raises Honda's North American production capacity to 1.83 million vehicles annually. According to the company, 87 percent of all Honda and Acura vehicles sold in the U.S. are made in North America.

The smallest vehicle Honda currently builds here is the Civic, which is made in both Indiana and Ontario, Canada. As for what this new Mexican plant will build, our best guess is the Fit, which is already a worldy car being built and sold as the Honda Jazz all over the globe. The only other small cars that Honda sells in the U.S. are its two hybrids, the Insight and CR-Z, and to date the company has kept production of its hybrid vehicles in Japan.

Sorry about the headline, I had to.
 
Ford and other make cars in Mexico and they don't fall apart like VWs.
 
Okay, so if I want to replace my Fit with another one (something I'm seriously thinking about), do it before the 2015 model year. Well, at least I've been warned.
 
Ford and other make cars in Mexico and they don't fall apart like VWs.

Yeah, but aren't all Ford plants outside of the US (outside of the UAW's reach) pretty much automated? Like minimal as possible human intervention?
 
Yeah, but aren't all Ford plants outside of the US (outside of the UAW's reach) pretty much automated? Like minimal as possible human intervention?

Not fully automated, but much more so than the UAW plants up here (because the UAW won't let them). Here was their first of the new generation factories:


As they rebuild the non-US plants, they're being built to the same standards.
 
My first thoughts when reading the threadtitle "well how freaking hard can that be?" :p
 
In my world Volkswagen makes cars with a high level of quality feel to them. Build quality perhaps not so much.
 
In my world Volkswagen makes cars with a high level of quality feel to them. Build quality perhaps not so much.

That, and in terms of reliability, Honda is and was allready better than VW, even know, VW isn't that bad in that case either.
 
In the past I've owned a Honda Civic EX coupe, and loved it, but they really seem off the rails lately with their designs, and not going after VW levels of quality? WTF is going on, it's like some sort of bizarro world. And not to bash on VW, I also owned a mk4 GTI, and it was fine, but still I expect more from Honda than this.
 
There was a recent article that criticized Honda over the new Civic for replacing a successful car with a lesser incarnation.
 
Dont blame mexico for volkswagen's quality. None of the MK4 golfs were built there and im pretty sure they are all broken.
 
Was going to say, being equal to VW build quality is not a good thing.
 
Sorry, I should have included some form of refried sick joke.
 
There was a recent article that criticized Honda over the new Civic for replacing a successful car with a lesser incarnation.

Isn't that a Japanese tradition with their cars? Whenever they have a successful model, instead of improving it in the next model generation, they throw it all in the bin and come up with something new, that's usually worse or less attractive?*

Their inconsistency is the main problem with Japanese carmakers in my opinion.

*Exceptions confirm the rule, Miata owners ;)

Dont blame mexico for volkswagen's quality. None of the MK4 golfs were built there and im pretty sure they are all broken.

Well, my 1999 Golf IV is still running fine without any problems. No malfunctions, everything's working. And don't think that I care for it. Actually I completely neglect it.

Then again, I also don't abuse it.
 
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Whats wrong with the Fit/Jazz as the new civic? I love them.

They are great. Note above that I'm seriously thinking about replacing my first-gen Fit with another one. The only problem I have with the second-generation Fit is the interior trim. Those gigantic knobs on the center console are a turn-off. A third-gen Fit should go back to the smaller, more discreet knobs, keep the interior space of the second-gen, and get a special edition Sport that's been touched inappropriately by Mugen to give it the extra bit of horsepower and torque that it needs (there's just no damn power or torque in fifth gear).

To be honest, one of the big reasons I chose the Fit was that it was assembled in Japan; after experiencing reliability issues with my four American-built cars, I threw in the towel. Even the three recalls were for relatively minor problems (I did experience two of them in mine). Thus, transfer of building to Mexico for the Fit does make me very, very nervous about getting another one should it happen.
 
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