About 2,000 new Honda Accords, the best-selling car in the United States for the past two years, are being stored on a lot as the Japanese manufacturer resists layoffs at its U.S. assembly plant, the company says.
The cars are being kept at a former Army depot in Marion, Ohio, about 25 miles northeast of the Accord assembly plant in Marysville, Ohio, Honda Motor Co. spokesman Kurt Antonius said."The last thing we want to do is disrupt production at Marysville," he was quoted as saying in Monday's edition of Automotive News, a weekly industry journal. It's expected that unsold Honda Civics, made at Marys-ville and nearby East Liberty, Ohio, also will be stored at the depot.
Through the first seven weeks of this year, sales of Honda's North American-built cars were down 21.9 percent, to 38,482, compared with the same period in 1990. For the same period, sales of all North American cars were down about 13 percent.
Earlier this year, Honda announced it would trim first-quarter U.S. production by about 5,000 cars. The Marysville plant makes about 1,400 Accords a day.