State to Get Acura Site for Design
Twenty years after introducing Acura premium vehicles to the U.S., Honda Motor Co. has chosen California as the site of the brand’s first design center.
“Acura will become a more global brand, and will go out into China and Japan,” Honda President Takeo Fukui said Sunday in an interview at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. “Acura models developed in the U.S., led by U.S. engineers, will become key products in the global operation.”
The new design center will open next year in Torrance, home to Honda’s U.S. headquarters, Fukui said. Acuras are currently designed at Honda design studios in Torrance and in Japan.
It will cost “less than $10 million” and probably employ fewer than 100 designers, said Koichi Kondo, Honda’s North American chief executive. More than a dozen automotive design studios run by the world’s biggest automakers are based in California.
Honda, based in Tokyo, began selling Acura models in the U.S. in 1986 to retain buyers looking to upgrade from Honda’s small, fuel-efficient cars to larger, more luxurious models. Its success with Acura led Japanese competitors Toyota Motor Corp. to follow with Lexus and Nissan Motor Co. to create Infiniti.
In 2003, Toyota created a separate design center for Lexus at the automaker’s global headquarters in Toyota City, Japan. Nissan doesn’t operate a studio solely for Infiniti.
Acura, the No. 5 premium auto brand in the U.S., will build the studio after selling a record 209,610 cars and light trucks in 2005, a 5.4% increase from the year before. Lexus sold 302,895 vehicles in the U.S. last year and is the country’s largest luxury brand, followed by BMW, General Motors Corp.’s Cadillac and DaimlerChrysler’s Mercedes-Benz.
Honda said last month that as many as five Acura models would be sold in Japan starting in 2008. Sales in China begin this year, Fukui said, and the automaker “hopes to sell about 250,000 to 300,000” Acuras a year worldwide by 2008. Acuras are now sold mainly in the U.S. and Canada.
