Free Republic

I know that everyone reading this was thinking what I was thinking when I first heard about this. Fearful that they're losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access, The Washington Times reported on Monday.

It may look a little precarious and uncomfortable to ride, but Honda believe their new 'personal mobility' device could one day be zipping up and down our streets. The vehicle looks like a very modern unicycle and to ride it you simply lean your weight in the direction you want to go, whether that's forward, backwards or even sideways. It maintains its own balance travelling up to 3.7MPH. The U3-X, which was given a test-run by reporters in Japan today, was designed to be small, safe and unobtrusive enough to mingle with pedestrians or use indoors, according to Honda Motors....

Sort of reminds you of the scene in Deliverance

GREENSBURG, Ind. -Less than a year after starting mass production, the Honda Manufacturing of Indiana plant is announcing the building of Honda Civic Sedans for sale in Mexico and export to 22 Latin American and Caribbean nations and U.S. territories. The first Civics destined for export were shipped last week. Until now, the more than 50,000 Civics built at the Greensburg plant had been sold exclusively in the United States.

Hailed as a jump-start for the U.S. economy, the federal government's "cash for clunkers" gave the biggest boost to foreign automakers. Overall, auto sales in August were the highest in more than a year, according to industry figures released Tuesday. Carmakers sold more than 1.2 million cars and trucks, up 1% from the same month last year and the first year-over-year sales gain since August 2007. Much of that was a result of the clunkers program, which ran July 24 to Aug. 24 and provided hefty government rebates to consumers who traded in gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient new vehicles....

The Obama administration spent three billion dollars subsidizing the destruction of 700,000 vehicles in order to boost car sales. Which auto makers actually benefited from these American tax subsidies? Reuters reports that foreign car manufacturers gained market share, while the two bailed-out American automakers lost significant portions of theirs in the big summer sale. Only Ford managed to hold its own:

 Event Update  Congressman Mike Honda's tele-townhall meeting has been changed from August 25th to September 1st. No reason for the change has been given. California district 15 constituents can sign up for his tele-townhall raffle http://honda.house.gov/telephonetownhall/

Honda Motor Co. plans to introduce electric vehicles in the U.S. early next decade, joining a growing number of automakers vying for the lead in clean technology development, local media reported Saturday. Japan's second-biggest car maker, which has focused on gas-electric hybrids so far, is building an all-electric prototype to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October, according to the Nikkei financial newspaper. It said Honda would begin sales of electric vehicles in the United States in the first half of the decade. A Honda spokesman said the Tokyo-based company has begun to develop electric vehicles, but has...

We knew the day would come when the final Gold Wing motorcycle would be built in America after Honda announced last year that it would eventually close its motorcycle plant in Marysville, Ohio. Apparently, that time is now, as Honda has confirmed that the Gold Wing assembly line has halted. Moving forward, all Gold Wings – along with just about every other two-wheeler from Honda – will be imported from Japan. Finished in 1979, the 330,000 square-foot Marysville Motorcycle Plant that has assembled the Gold Wing since 1981 was the first Honda manufacturing facility in America. Since then, over a...

A motocross publication that I read online is quoting Nasdaq that Honda is closing their Marysville OH plant, which currently produces the VTX and Honda Goldwing motorcycles. Production (up to 75,000 motorcycles/year) is being sourced back to Japan.

TOKYO — Honda bucked expectations of losses in the first quarter, today posting a 7.5 billion yen ($79.8 million) profit and raising forecasts for the full year on optimism auto sales will improve. The results for the April-June period were better than the flood of red ink some analysts had forecast though profit was still down 96 percent, battered by slumping car sales and a strong yen, which offset cost cuts. Honda made a net profit of 173.3 billion yen in the same period of 2008.

Seven House Democrats have written Attorney General Eric Holder invoking a list of grievances from radical Islamist groups and asking that Holder meet with representatives from those groups to hear their concerns, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned. The grievances include the use of convicted felons as informants in mosques, alleged religious profiling of Somali Muslims in Minnesota and elsewhere and allegations that the FBI is working with foreign governments to question American citizens who are terror suspects. In the letter, the representatives said: "These concerns raise legitimate questions about due process, justice, and equal treatment under the law....

A study of car safety released on Wednesday shows that four of the top-scoring automobiles in tests of five new models were small cars or so-called super-minis — including the Honda Jazz, Hyundai i20, Kia Soul and Peugeot 3008. . . Seats installed in the Kia Soul, for example, “achieved a good result in the program’s whiplash testing, again revealing that it is not only larger or expensive cars that achieve impressive results in safety.” . . . It said the Honda Jazz and Hyundai i20 racked up “impressive pedestrian scores”

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid… So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place. So here goes. It’s terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it anymore. Jeremy Clarkson The Sunday Times, May 17, 2009

It’s rare that we test two-year-old cars, but this particular Accord is rarer—in the U.S., anyway—than burlesque houses in a Texan polygamy camp. Under the hood is a 2.2-liter four-cylinder engine. It’s happy as low as 1300 rpm, but power starts at about 1600, with a whopping 251 pound-feet of torque (55 percent more than the current four-cylinder Accord) available at 2000 rpm. There is a nearly imperceptible difference between 70- or 80-percent throttle and flat-footing it, meaning the car feels quick when driven at about 8/10th, but sluggish when it’s really hammered. It took 8.9 seconds to wind the...

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda's new low-priced hybrid. So far, though, you have not been told what it's like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place. So here it comes. It's terrible. Biblically terrible. It doesn't work. Acceleration is poor. And the sound is worse. So you're sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you're doing only 23 mph and you're thinking things can't get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of...

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days. So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place. So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing...

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days. So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place. So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing...

In a development that realizes a scenario out of a science fiction movie, scientists have developed technology enabling a robot to be controlled by thought power. A user wears a helmet that detects changes in blood flow and brain waves in different parts of his or her brain and converts them into radio signals that are transmitted to the bipedal humanoid robot, operating its limbs and making it speak.

WASHINGTON, DC - April 6, 2009: Amidst charges that embattled American Honda is systematically suppressing its compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicle program, the company has suddenly fueled that impression by throwing into bankruptcy its wholly-owned CNG refueling company, Fuelmaker. Toronto-based Fuelmaker was arguably the lynchpin of CNG’s future as a bridge solution to alternative fuel. The firm manufactured and distributed the essential refueling appliance that allowed home-based and fleet refueling of CNG vehicles, including the Honda Civic GX, heralded as the “greenest car in America.”

In crash tests released Tuesday, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that drivers of 2009 versions of the Smart "fortwo," Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris could face significant leg and head injuries in severe front-end crashes with larger, mid-size vehicles. "There are good reasons people buy mini cars. They're more affordable, and they use less gas. But the safety trade-offs are clear from our new tests," said Adrian Lund, the institute's president.

-snip- Taking a page from the aviation industry-and, truth be told, video games-Honda has created what it calls the SMARTrainer (Safe Motorcycle Awareness and Recognition Trainer). -snip-

Honda offering local workers incentives to quit Other cost-cutting measures planned; 13 days of production to be cut Tuesday, March 31, 2009 5:19 PM By Dan Gearino THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH For the first time, Honda is offering Ohio employees incentives to resign. The move, which continues the company's tradition of avoiding layoffs, is part of a wide-ranging set of cost-saving measures announced today. "Regardless of job title or level within our organization, each Honda associate will share the responsibility of doing what we must to remain competitive," said spokesman Ron Lietzke. Among the other moves: • Honda will cut 13...

BURLINGTON, N.C., U.S.A., November 28, 2007–Honda Aero, Inc., officially broke ground on its new corporate headquarters and state-of-the-art jet engine plant in Burlington, North Carolina, on property located adjacent to the Burlington-Alamance County regional airport. Honda Aero also announced that it has successfully run a proof-of-concept version of the advanced and efficient GE Honda HF120 turbofan engine, and that the engine has exceeded the company's internal development targets for both thrust performance and specific fuel consumption (SFP) on its first test run. The company is moving toward its goals of engine certification in 2009 followed by the start of mass...

Although I do not watch it, my wife had GMA on this morning and they had a piece, something like "surviving the recession". To make a long story short, the three cars they recomended included two Toyotas and a Honda.

GREENVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — State police have ticketed an upstate New York man for driving more than twice the 65-mph speed limit on an interstate highway. Troopers said a 21-year-old man was clocked doing 137 mph on Interstate 84 in Orange County on Tuesday. He was pulled over in the westbound lanes near Exit 2 in the town of Greenville, on the New Jersey border 60 miles northwest of New York City. Troopers said the man was driving a 1993 Honda Civic.

Honda Fury bike stirs up a storm Out this spring, it will cost about $13,000 By Matt Degen of The Orange County (Calif.) Register SANTA ANA, Calif. — Honda has just introduced a motorcycle that looks about as far from a Honda as one could imagine. The 2010 Fury was unveiled at the New York International Motorcycle Show, and it’s already creating some serious waves. “The Fury opens the door to the most extreme level of custom looks,” the company said. “But once you’re rolling, the Fury experience is all about that special bond between rider and machine.” The bike...

As unsold cars pile up at docks, Honda halts production for two more months It is an image which speaks volumes about the way the economic slump is crippling the car industry. Thousands of gleaming new Hondas pile up at Southampton Docks after the export market they were intended for dried up. The collapse in global sales has prompted the Japanese firm to announce an unprecedented four-month shutdown in the UK.

A Hawaiian Chevrolet dealership setup a jacked-up Suburban to crush a vintage Honda Accord to send a message to anyone buying Japanese. The message became somewhat cluttered when the tiny Honda broke the SUV. James Severtson, the general sales manager of Island Chevrolet in Hilo, Hawaii, hired a Chevrolet Suburban monster truck to drive over a used Honda Accord before a large crowd in order to highlight the importance and strength of American automakers. Instead, Severtson highlighted domestic quality issues when the truck blew a hydraulic hose and started leaking fluid after its first pass over the Accord. A few...

HILO, Hawaii – A Hilo Chevrolet dealer who tried to crush his Asian auto competition found the stunt a little harder to pull off than expected. Island Chevrolet general sales manager James Severtson arranged for a Chevrolet Suburban SUV outfitted with massive tires costing $5,000 apiece to drive over a Honda Accord. On the first attempt Friday, the monster truck blew a hydraulic hose and leaked vital fluid while the Honda remained intact and ready for more.

Almost 150 years after the American Civil War the struggle to save the country’s carmaking industry is once again becoming a battle between the Union and the Confederacy. In this latter-day renewal of hostilities the union is the United Auto Workers (UAW) whose members are mostly employed in Northern states such as Michigan, the traditional heartland of US motor manufacturing. Union leaders have bitterly denounced Republican Senators from the South for scuppering a $14 billion bailout package for General Motors (GM) and Chrysler which, along with Ford, make up Detroit’s “Big Three”. Many of those who voted against it represent...

The Pro-bailout people in congress as well as the directly affected companies keep talking about bailing out AMERICAN Auto Makers, saving AMERICAN manufacturing. Here's the little secret that they often don't talk about the American Auto Makers go WAY beyond Detroit's Weak Three. Some Toyotas are made here and in 2010 the extremely popular Prius will be made in the US also. Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, and Hyundai-Kia, BMW and Hyundai also do some of their manufacturing in the US. Here is a big irony, the same liberal members of congress who fight for immigrants who are in the US illegally,...

Honda will cut another 119,000 units from planned production in North America through March amid a deepening downturn in industrywide auto sales, the company said on Friday. The latest production cut means Honda will have cut a total of 175,000 vehicles from planned production for its fiscal year ending in March 2009. The move by Honda follows similar steps by most other automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)(TM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in the U.S. market, where consumer demand has slumped due to tight credit and a weakened economy. Honda's vehicle production for the...

Organized labor helped elect Barack Obama and now eagerly awaits his promised support for its top priority—a bill that would make it easier to set up union locals. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow unions to create local bargaining units without winning the vote of a majority of workers in a secret ballot. The local unit would be certified if a majority of workers endorsed it by signing an authorization card handed out by union organizers. Fair enough? Not really. The so-called card-check bill would not protect workers and it would not be "free choice." It would strip away...

Regarding Dr. John David's commentary, "Make it Easier to Unionize Workplace": Labor unions certainly have their place in a contemporary American economy, but not at the expense of employee free choice and economic security. Indeed, the Employee Free Choice Act would severely erode the freedom enjoyed by employees for nearly 75 years to make a private, fully-informed decision about whether or not they want a union to represent them. Too often, the losing party in a union election - the company or the union - blames its loss on the opposing party's "coercive and underhanded" tactics. In reality though, the...

Alright so this auto bailout bill is in a holding pattern. But just remember that it doesn't mean it is dead. So here are some facts that should keep you seething ... The Big Three currently pay 85% of union benefits to UAW members ... who aren't even working. Yep. Remember how I told you about the Job Banks for union workers? If a union worker is employed at a plant that closes, the auto makers still pay 85% of their union benefits. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, says that his company must reduce operating costs ... but his...

“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.” All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real. It...

The New Plan? Cripple Honda! Save Detroit with Card Check! Eliminating the secret ballot and making it easier to organize U.S. Honda and Toyota workers (and imposing contract terms via binding arbitration) would "level the playing field," says Dem. Congressman Tim Ryan. ... Then when Honda and Toyota responded by importing more cars from abroad, we could have import quotas! Eventually the whole automotive sector could be planned by Congress in conjunction with existing business and labor interest groups. Red State has seen the future and it is corporatist. ...12:21 P.M.

Unions are to blame for the Big Three automakers’ problems, according to a television ad meant to stoke public opposition to organized labor’s number one legislative priority. “Steel, auto, airlines. What do these industries all have in common?” asks the ad sponsored by the business-backed Employee Freedom Action Committee, which was active in several hotly contested Senate races this year. “Hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and union bosses that helped put them out of business.” The advertisement urges people to fight the Employee Free Choice Act, which unions hope will be taken up quickly by the Democratic Congress and...

President-elect Barack Obama, who co-sponsored the misleadingly titled Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate in 2007, has vowed that the measure, called “Card Check,” will be the law of the land once he’s in office. Given the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, if Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss loses Georgia’s runoff election on Dec. 2, Card Check probably will become law—and that would be terrible news for Americans who want to keep their jobs. Card Check would do away with the present secret ballot process used by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when employees vote on whether to...

There is a curiously dated logic in unions insisting that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which belies the back and forth accusatory rhetoric of intimidation between business and big labor. There are two principal methods for employees to join and command employers to recognize their union's collective bargaining request. First: Company workers can get at least 30 percent of their colleagues to sign petition cards requesting representation, send the cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and have them oversee a secret ballot election. Second: If more than half of the workers sign up for representation, a...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s, an intellectual elite that produces mostly methane had its knives...

LOS ANGELES, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) will cut another 18,000 units from its planned production in the United States in response to the downturn in industrywide auto sales, the company said on Thursday. The latest production cuts mean Honda will have cut 50,000 vehicles from its planned U.S. production since August when its sales began to fall in the world's largest vehicle market. The move by Honda follows similar steps by Japanese automakers Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Nissan Motor Co (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable. "Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a hastily called news conference in the Capitol. She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan. The decision averted a likely defeat of...

House Republican Leader John A. Boehner said Democrats' use of secret ballots to chose its leadership was ironic because the party wants to nix workers' rights to a secret voting in deciding whether to unionize. "The secret ballot election is a cornerstone of our American democracy," Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Thursday. "If it is good enough for House Democrats to rely on during today's high-stakes vote, shouldn't it be good enough for millions of American workers across America who value their workplace privacy?" He vowed Republicans would stand firmly against the Democrat's "card-check" legislation - dubbed the Employee Free...

DETROIT, Nov 20 (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said on Thursday that lawmakers need to take immediate action on a $25 billion bridge loan bill to support the U.S. automakers or one or more could fail. Gettelfinger, who testified on Tuesday and Wednesday to U.S. congressional committees in support of the loans, said he would not comment on a possible compromise bill reached by Democratic and Republican senators until details were known. When told that one detail might be that the automakers would have to provide a strategic plan to get access to the money, Gettelfinger said...

TALEGAON, India: General Motors Corp. opened a second plant in India on Tuesday, boosting its production capacity from 85,000 to 225,000 vehicles a year. The factory is part of GM's aggressive push into emerging markets, which have helped cushion the beleaguered auto giant from falling sales in the developed world. It also furthers the Indian government's ambition to turn the country into a manufacturing hub for small vehicles. "We believe India in three to four years will be a significant source of profit for us," said GM Asia Pacific President Nick Reilly. The first car — a pint-sized red Chevrolet...

The United Auto Workers union called on Congress and the Bush administration to get a loan to U.S. automakers to prevent their collapse before the legislature adjourns Friday. "Congress must not adjourn with the Bush administration in place without an agreement," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. "If there's no action, we could see the collapse of one or more domestic auto companies by the end of year." Gettelfinger said the cost of not acting would be devastating for the industry's employees and the U.S. economy. "The current recession that we're in would be made much worse," he added, saying states...

The Big Three automakers’ chief executives testified before Congress today, blaming the credit crisis for their downfall. But Richard Wagoner, CEO of General Motors (GM: 2.11, -0.68, -24.37%) did not use the credit crisis as an excuse for the company’s poor profits when he wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal in December 2005. In his opinion piece, which came amidst record sales, he blamed not the credit crisis, but a kaleidoscope of other reasons, including “intense” foreign competition, soaring gas prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and high benefit costs for the automakers’ downfall. And in his...

WASHINGTON -- A full-court effort by U.S. auto makers to secure federal aid appeared to be on the rocks after the companies failed to convince lawmakers of the urgent need for a rescue. Michigan Rep. Dale Kildee, Chrysler Chairman and CEO Robert Nardelli, GM Chairman and CEO Richard Wagoner, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Michigan Rep. Sandy Levin (left to right) prior to a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill at which the auto makers made their case for federal assistance. Late Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid backed away from efforts to force a vote this week on a Democratic-backed...