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AUTOS' OPINION
* USA - Low fuel standards hurt auto industry
Reading,PA,USA -Editorial from Reading Eagle - August 12, 2006: The Issue: U.S.-based auto manufacturers, heavily reliant on gas-guzzling trucks and sport-utility vehicles, account for a record-low 52 percent of American sales in July... Our Opinion: With the price of gas hovering around $3 a gallon, fuel economy has become a major concern of buyers... If July is any indication, it appears that the demand for such vehicles has peaked. Americans are growing more concerned about fuel economy and even starting to look at gas-electric hybrids such as the Toyota Camry... It is time for the American auto industry to concentrate on safe, fuel-efficient cars and trucks, much the way foreign manufacturers have. The very survival of General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler may hang in the balance...
* USA - The world catches up to Honda
By staying true to its principles, the Japanese automaker is making buckets of money in a tough market
NEW YORK,NY,USA -Fortune, by Alex Taylor -August 14 2006: -- For the past decade, Honda has been out of step with most of its North American competitors - sometimes defiantly so... While other automakers rushed to beef up their pickup trucks and SUVs with stronger frames and bigger motors, Honda stood to one side, refusing to develop either a V-8 engine or a traditional body-on-frame light truck. Likewise, when other manufacturers engaged in a horsepower race to lure consumers and take advantage of cheap gasoline, Honda held back. Staying true to its philosophy of "maximum man, minimum machine" it concentrated on smaller, more efficient four- and six-cylinder engines... Honda's decision to stick with what it believes in is now paying off big time. Look at what happened in July. For its first quarter, Honda reported sales up 15 percent and operating profit up 19 percent. The Honda Accord and Civic ranked as the second and fourth best selling passenger cars in America. In a U.S. market where overall sales fell 17.4 percent, Honda brand vehicles rose 6 percent... To cap off a remarkable performance, Honda passed Chrysler Group in sales for the first time in history, coming in fourth behind General Motors, Toyota, and Ford... Unlike richer and more powerful Toyota, which matches American producers car for car and truck for truck, Honda has succeeded by remaining very much a focused Japanese-style company. It maintains a relatively modest product line that it sells in high volume around the globe. Its concessions to American tastes, like the Element SUV and Ridgeline pickup, seem almost like afterthoughts...
posted by Unknown @ 9:30 AM
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