2005 Honda Accord on 2040-cars

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Hurricane Sandy cost automakers 15,000 vehicles, may have ruined up to 200k

Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic storm in US history, and its total economic impact is just now coming into view. According to Automotive News, Toyota, Chrysler, Nissan and Honda are set to scrap around 15,000 new vehicles ruined by the storm. Nissan alone accounts for about 40 percent of those, with 6,000 Nissan and Infiniti models deeded "un-saleable" due to damage. The company saw 56 dealerships shuttered due to the storm, but 51 of those have since reopened.
Toyota, meanwhile, had some 4,000 vehicles at its Newark port facility, and of those, 3,000 may be scrapped. An additional 825 were dealer inventory when they were ruined. Honda and Acura dealers are reportedly sending 3,440 vehicles to the salvage yard. By comparison, Chrysler weathered the storm fairly well with 825 units destroyed, while Hyundai suffered only 400 lost units and Kia scrapped around 200.
As you may recall, Fisker also suffered some losses, and Automotive News reports the manufacturer saw 320 Karma models damaged beyond repair. Ford and General Motors have yet to come up with estimates, and no automaker has commented on the full cost of replacing the vehicles.

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.

New Honda ad has Senna, Type R, Asimo, and astronauts

Now that Honda is back into the guts-and-performance game, automotively speaking, the Japanese company has hit the throttle on hardcore imagery. Its latest is in an ad for the company itself highlighting a small selection of its ample range of products, from motorcycles to an airplane and the coming Acura NSX, branded Honda in other markets. Called "Ignition," Wieden+Kennedy created the 90-second spot for Honda Motor Europe, with the tagline "Dare to do what others only dream of." The theme is a space launch, to give that "feeling of daring and human endeavor," perfectly supported by the print artwork with Asimo the robot up front and fabulously complicated hybrid V6 power units spewing flames from the Formula 1 cars in back. Then there's the family in the HR-V in the middle, defying gravity and sipping from juice boxes, because space is for everyone. Ayrton Senna makes a cameo again, and a Stanley Kubrick aesthetic hangs all over the production. You can check out the ad in the video above.