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Junkyard Gem: 1997 Acura SLX

By the second half of the 1990s, the tremendous sales success of the Ford Explorer (introduced as a 1991 model) and Jeep Grand Cherokee (introduced as a 1993 model) had made it clear clear that the future of the American road would be trucks. Any automotive manufacturer not selling a full line of SUV-ish machinery here would be irrelevant soon after the dawn of the new century, and the car-and-bike-centric American Honda Motor Company was therefore in big trouble. The Civic could be used as the basis for a small crossover SUV (which debuted here as the 1997 Honda CR-V), but Honda needed to buy time to design and produce the platform that would underpin the 2001 Acura MDX and 2003 Honda Pilot. That time was purchased via a deal to sell rebadged Isuzu trucks as Hondas and Acuras. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those Honda-ized Isuzus, found in a Colorado boneyard. Honda began selling the Isuzu Rodeo as the Passport (recycling the name they'd used on the U.S.-market Super Cub motorcycle) for the 1994 model year, and Acura dealers started moving SLX-badged Isuzu Troopers in the 1997 model year. Just to make things interesting in the Isuzu-Honda world, North American Isuzu dealers sold Honda Odysseys with Isuzu Oasis badges at the same time. Isuzu had gone all-truck for the American market after the last Styluses (and closely related Geo Storms) were sold here as 1993 models. Sadly, Isuzu's final (non-commercial) new vehicles sold here were rebadged Chevy Trailblazers and Colorados, more than 30 years after Chevrolet began selling Isuzu Faster pickups here with LUV badges. Honda never did build any body-on-frame trucks, but that proved unnecessary in order to make some money during the CUV/SUV era. The SLX never sold particularly well, but it gave Acura dealers a luxury truck to park next to the Integras, TLs, RLs, CLs and NSXs in their showrooms. After 1999, the SLX was gone, leaving just the 2000 model year as a blank spot for Acura-badged SUVs. This truck held together like a real Honda product, getting fairly close to the 300,000-mile mark (I've found junkyard Accords with better than a half-million miles on their odometers, plus one apiece Civic and CR-V that got past 400,000 miles during their lives). The original owner's manuals were still in the glovebox when I found this truck. At the end, it appears that it was towed away for being parked illegally. Maybe the engine or transmission failed and its final owner just walked away.

Honda's Acura NSX masterstroke: building the factory in Ohio

When Honda announced it was going to build its NSX supercar in Ohio instead of Japan, it caught everybody in the industry by surprise. No one expected this proud Japanese company to build its most technologically advanced sports car anywhere but in its home country. Now Honda has a supercar production facility in rural Ohio that would be the envy of any Formula One team. The people at Honda call it the PMC, but its official name is the Performance Manufacturing Center. It's a building that started out as a shipping facility for suppliers, but Honda invested $70 million to transform it into a showcase facility that will build the NSX. Honda benchmarked the assembly operations at Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, and Bentley before work began on its facility. The 200,000 square-foot building will also double as a customer reception center – Honda will open the doors for customers to come see their car being built. It's also going to offer them high-speed test drives at the gigantic Transportation Research Center just down the road. No one expected this proud Japanese company to build its most technologically advanced sports car anywhere but in its home country. Inside, the layout is wide open and well lit. There are no stripes or lines on the floor and none of the different departments are walled off. This creates a more welcoming appearance and lets you get a comprehensive view of the entire process at a glance. And with an eye towards future lessons learned, most of the equipment is of a modular design that can be easily reconfigured or moved. The body shop and paint shop are enclosed by glass walls so that anyone can see what's going on inside. And while you'll see some automation here and there, the idea was to achieve a blend between man and machine, not to try and automate everything. This is a low-volume facility with production targeted at only eight to ten cars a day. The plant runs four days a week with one ten-hour shift. Don't expect to see rows of new NSXs parked on any dealer's lot. The car will only be built to order. Honda is obsessed with ensuring the NSX is built to the most exacting quality standards. The plant people pored over the JD Power Appeal study to determine what supercar customers care about the most, then looked at which aspects of that directly tie into manufacturing. They developed their quality control strategy with three goals in mind. First, they wanted to build everything right the first time with no adjustments.

Honda's electric 0 Series: 5 things we learned at CES 2024

LAS VEGAS — After Honda announced its new all-electric 0 Series at CES this week, suffice it to say we had questions. Fortunately for us, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe was there to share the news in person. Along with other selected media, we had the opportunity to ask anything we liked about the forthcoming platform and Honda's plans for its rollout here in the United States starting in 2026. Here are five key things we learned about this new platform and the cars it will underpin.  We may see one before the Saloon arrives in 2026 While Honda has promised it will launch a production model based on the 'Saloon' concept in North America in 2026, another 0 Series vehicle may actually arrive at the same time — or even sooner. What form that may take is anybody's guess, as Mibe remained shy about the details. For now, treat 2026 as the hard deadline and rule nothing out. It will expand to new segments At launch, 0 Series will be a "mid-large" platform, which we can take to mean midsize for practical purposes. This would support cars of equivalent size to Honda's existing Accord and Passport along with the Odyssey minivan (take a close look at that Space Hub concept below). Honda plans to offer 0 Series models with different footprints later. A small-car platform suitable for subcompact, midcompact and compact offerings (think Honda City, HR-V, Civic, CR-V, etc.) will follow later, as will an even larger platform, which we would expect to be utilized for a Pilot equivalent. Though the existing ICE-powered Pilot and its other sibling, the Ridgeline are midsizers riding on the same platform as the aforementioned Passport, these are as big as Honda's trucks and crossovers get. If the mid-large platform could accommodate such offerings, it stands to reason that a larger one wouldn't be necessary.  It has not damaged Honda's relationship with GM Mibe dismissed any perceived rift between Honda and General Motors resulting from the dissolution of their agreement to build a line of small cars on GM's Ultium EV platform. The companies parted ways over a desire to approach their long-term electrification strategies differently, not over any technological limitations or constraints provided by the Ultium platform itself, Mibe said, and the two companies are still working together to develop autonomous technology utilizing elements of GM's Cruise division.