Honda: US Recovery Still Elusive

The United States market recovery isn't showing too significant signs of recovery, a senior Honda executive said in a statement, emphasizing that the local market is still living under the pressure of the economic recession. Executive vice president Koichi Kondo said he expects US total industry sales of around 10 million for the fiscal year ending in March 2010, down from 10.5 million, just-auto.com wrote.

Honda, who expects to sell a total of 3.4 million units worldwide in 2009, said that new car sales fell 10.4 percent in the second quarter of the year to 838,000 units.

Japanese carmaker Honda managed to raise its forecast by no less than four times the initial number: 155 billion yen ($1.7 billion). The increase was made possible thank to two major reasons, the government incentives set in place in Japan and the growing Chinese auto market. For the July-September quarter, net profit dropped 56.2 percent from one year earlier, to 54.0 billion yen ($587.0 million).

However, this doesn't mean that the Japanese manufacturer is going to neglect its US operations. The company recently opened a new port facility in Richmond, California which is going to reduce operations from the San Diego port and increase support for Honda and Acura dealers in Northern California.

"Establishing these operations in Richmond will help us secure and balance our long-term logistics needs," said Dennis Manns, assistant vice president of logistics for American Honda. "This additional port not only ensures future rail and port capacity, but it also has a net environmental benefit, a key goal for Honda in all of its operations."