The first Japanese maker to build cars in America (1978)

Fitting where you build to where you sell

At the core of this decision was that Honda broke, in the very middle of its largest market, the postwar Japanese auto industry’s template of earning through exports. Rather than absorbing trade friction through politics, it rearranged the placement of production to fit the market — a defensive move that, in the end, produced a deep rooting in North American soil. While other makers waited to see, Honda went ahead alone, and it can be read as a decision in which a latecomer to four-wheelers got out in front of what would become the industry’s standard practice.

That said, what followed shows how a strength in expanding outward can become the next weight. The more North America grew into a pillar supporting earnings, the deeper the dependence on it became. In the 2010s the chronic losses in Europe and the consolidation of domestic plants bore down as heavy problems, and the logic of expansion reversed into the logic of subtraction. The outward step taken at Marysville in 1978 connects quietly, it seems, to the moment forty years later when Honda would have to rethink the placement of its production.