Honda Motorcycles says Adios to So Cal

[pekingduck]

American Honda started business in n a small storefront in L. A., 4 blocks from where I grew up. Now, most of it's motorcycle division is moving to their assembly plants in South Carolina or Georgia or Ohio. Bear in mind, most of this was administrative, and some upper management remains, along with Honda and Acura cars.

From L.A., Honda then moved south 20 miles to Gardena, across from Isky Cams, and from there, to nearby Torrance, a stone's throw from Edelbrock. I mention Isky and Edelbrock because the '60s and '70s were an explosive time for cars and motorcycles and things on wheels, and So Cal was the center of it all.

Many of the 2 million who had come out to work in wartime aircraft plants and shipyards stayed afterwards for the weather, and found peacetime jobs at Boeing and Douglas and Lockheed, or in the new aerospace industry. And these were gearheads, eager to get their hands on a machine, tear it apart, figure how to make it faster and better.

Without good timing and the So Cal car and bike culture, the motorcycle industry , especially Honda, would not have have had the boom it did. (In the early '70s, Honda had 50% of the market.) Now times are different, the nature of business, the market, and the population have changed. It was a great run, great fun for 63 years. Hope for more wherever you are.

Adios

[LongRanger_imp]

Toyota too. Didn’t they leave So Cal for Texas a few years ago?

[Gone in 60]

But what about.... “Our home is here in Torrance,” said company spokesman Marcos Frommer. “We have no plans to move. We never did have plans to move.

“California has a skilled and diverse workforce,” he added, “and that’s important to us because we have a diverse operation here.”

https://www.dailybreeze.com/2019/06/14/t...south-bay/

[Stichill_imp]

2019: "We have no plans to move. We never did have plans to move."

2021: "We're getting the heck out of here! We knew y'all's crazy but not this crazy!"

[pekingduck]

But what about.... “Our home is here in Torrance,” said company spokesman Marcos Frommer. “We have no plans to move. We never did have plans to move.

“California has a skilled and diverse workforce,” he added, “and that’s important to us because we have a diverse operation here.”

https://www.dailybreeze.com/2019/06/14/t...south-bay/

Only the motorcycle division has moved en-masse with Honda cars and Acura remaining. Power Products has been in Georgia for decades.

For years, Honda has been renting blocks of office buildings for mostly IT-related personnel, as space had long run out on their Torrance campus. So those staff will be moving in to consolidate.

[Gone in 60]

Atually, is this something new? I've been to a few focus groups for Honda motorcycles, the most recent being around 2015-ish, before the current Rebel came out. It was at their automotive headquarters campus in Torrance.

[Charlie Bravo_imp]

It's the end of an era, for sure. There's a huge Yamaha building right down the street from me. The word is, they're moving to GA, California being too costly to do business.

https://www.asphaltandrubber.com/news/ya...s-georgia/

[Gone in 60]

Dang, no way! I used to do business with the Yamaha guys in Cypress, for generators and golf carts for our event business.

A multi-brand conglomerate of racing and performance companies swallowed up the business I worked at here in Orange County a few years ago, which manufactured racing data and telemetry systems. At first, it was novel for the conglomerate to have a "California division", but of course that very shortly became "Why are we maintaining a manufacturing facility in California?"

[Stichill_imp]

[pekingduck]

Atually, is this something new? I've been to a few focus groups for Honda motorcycles, the most recent being around 2015-ish, before the current Rebel came out. It was at their automotive headquarters campus in Torrance.

The move was in the planning for years. The design center, where you likely were, has moved within the last year. Local office space is at a premium, and Honda was putting up with less than ideal conditions, running shuttle busses between the main campus and these satellite locations.

Another reason Honda, Toyota, Nissan and other located to So Cal was because there was a large Japanese and Japanese-American community in Torrance and Gardena, with lots of markets, hotels, restaurants catering to visiting Japanese executives. Imagine the '60s, just 15-20 years after WW2, and there was still widespread "dislike" for Japanese. That has lessened somewhat.