Manufacturer Highlight - Honda!

For a Japanese company, Honda has a textbook American story. To buy new Honda carsis to buy into a tradition of stubborn devotion: to reliability, practicality, and affordability. Today, Honda not only makes cars, but engines, bikes, and (what could be more Japanese?) robots.

Started by untrained mechanic Soichiro Honda, the first iteration of his company was a small business called Tokai Seiki that made piston rings for Toyota. After multiple setbacks, the company virtually disappeared as Honda immersed himself both in engineering schools, Toyota’s infrastructure and his native Japan’s manufacturing factories. The Honda Technical Research Institute emerged after World War II, providing motorized bicycles using war surplus engines. The company gradually branched off into small pickups and sport cars, developing Acura into a successful American brand in 1986. It is now the seventh largest automotive manufacturer in the world and fourth in the United States, forging its reputation with the slogan “the Power of Dreams.”

2013 calls for a commitment to basics with the new Honda Accord – three new engines, higher MPG, and a base price of 25k under a very familiar bonnet, with the same roomy rear end, and still the smartest buy on the road. Car leasing companies know: buy Honda, buy Acura, it will last pretty much forever.