'08 Honda Accord: continuous improvement in action; They've come a long way in eight generations. A remarkably long way. And while they're touting saf

When you think about diminutive Hondas, the 2007 Fit fits the bill. It has an overall length of 157.4 in. and a 96.5-in. wheelbase. Tiny, right? Well, consider these numbers: overall length 162.8 in.; wheelbase, 93.7 in. Pretty much in the same ballpark. But those are figures not for some B-car, but for the first-generation Honda Accord. And while the Fit has four doors, the 1976 Accord was available as a three-door hatch; the sedan didn't appear until 1979.

If you want to know how far the auto industry has come in a comparatively short period of time, consider this: the eighth-generation Honda Accord Sedan is in the EPA "Large" classification (predicated on the interior volume, 120 [ft.sup.3]). The 2008 Accord is 194.1 in. long (up 3 in. from the seventh generation) and has a 110.2-in. wheelbase (2.3-in. longer than the '07).

And speaking of how things have changed, consider this: the original Accord had a 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine that produced 68 hp. The 2.3-liter four available for the '08 Accord provides 200 hp, and there is an available 3.5-liter V6 that generates 268 hp. And speaking of Accords and engines: there wasn't a V6 available until 1995, when a 170-hp 2.7-liter engine was offered.
One last thing: the first Accord had an MSRP of $3,995.

The second-generation Accord, which was launched in 1982, was the first vehicle built by Honda of America Manufacturing's Marysville Auto Plant in Ohio. (They started building motorcycles in Marysville in 1979.) That first sedan, now in the collection at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, was produced on November 1. Through the remainder of 1982, the plant manufactured 968 Accords. Today the production capacity in the Marysville plant is 1,800 vehicles per day. (And in addition to Accords, Marysville Auto Plant (MAP) manufacturers Acura TLs and Acura RDXs.) Nearly nine million vehicles have been produced there since that start. One interesting aspect of the launch of the '08 Accord in Marysville is that Clement D'Souza, engineering project leader for the vehicle, explains that because they have been continuously improving the operations at MAP, the integration of the '08 model didn't require a major tear-up of the facility. That is, they've been running the Honda New Manufacturing System at MAP since 2002, when the '03 Accord was launched.

The New Manufacturing System is predicated on utilizing flexible equipment in the body shop so that changeovers are more a matter of reprogramming and retooling end effectors than anything else. Two years ago they installed a $123-million paint shop at MAP. In early '07, a door assembly department was installed in part of the area where the old paint shop had been. Even though the dimensions of the 2008 Accord Sedan and the 2008 Accord Coupe--which are completely separate vehicles, sharing no body panels whatever--are larger than the vehicles they replace*, D'Souza indicates that putting the new vehicles into the plant was essentially a matter of doing what needed to be done in a rather matter-of-fact manner. Note that he isn't saying it was easy. Nor that it was simple. Rather, that it wasn't particularly extraordinary, because that, in effect is what they do.