Race Cars, Rockets and the New Acura RSX: Honda R&D Marks 50 Years in LA

Like its Japanese rivals, Honda Motor Co. struggled to understand how to grow in the U.S. market, a challenge that led it to set up a small research and development center in Los Angeles in 1975. A half-century later the automaker operates 21 separate R&D facilities across the U.S. where its designers and engineers are working on everything from race cars to rockets, along with some significant new vehicle programs. Headlight.News dropped into the main facility in the LA suburb of Torrance to check out what’s in the works.

While Honda may today be one of the most familiar brand names on U.S. roadways it wasn’t always the case. A half century ago, it was a struggling manufacturer lagging well behind key Japanese rivals Toyota and Nissan and officials saw the American market as critical to the company’s long-term success.

It imported its first model in 1959. But while products such as the pint-sized N600 developed a modest following, Honda clearly needed to do more to crack the code and the only way it could do that was to set up a U.S. market research center “to learn what (American) customers wanted,” said June Nakagawa. That R&D facility, which Nakagawa now runs, opened up exactly 50 years ago and is today a critical cog in the global Honda empire.

The LA operation has grown substantially since it played a lead role in the development of  the original Honda CRX. Today, there are 20 other R&D facilities scattered across the U.S., with a cumulative investment of nearly $1.5 billion. And while vehicles like the new Acura RSX remain central, Honda’s U.S. R&D arm today is involved in a wide range of projects that include race cars, corporate jets, even a new, reusable rocket and a project that could help provide power for a permanent settlement on the moon.

A modest start

The decision to set up a U.S. R&D operation was a matter of fortuitous timing. The U.S. was being hammered by the first Mideast oil boycott. Motorists were struggling not only to find fuel but to pay for what they could get, prices more than doubling in a matter of months. The new Honda CRX was an instant hit, delivering 51 miles per gallon, more than triple what the typical model from Detroit could offer.

The original R&D facility opened in 1975 in Gardena, alongside what was then Honda’s U.S. headquarters. Both have since moved to bigger facilities in nearby Torrance. Both have grown substantially over the years, the research and development HQ anchoring a network of 21 facilities spread out across the U.S., including the North American Automotive Development Center in central Ohio, near the company’s first American assembly plant in Marysville.

R&D operations today cover “all facets of product development in the U.S.,” Honda explained in a statement marking the 50^th anniversary, “including market and technology research, product styling, engineering design, prototype fabrication and testing, collaboration with parts suppliers and support for mass production.

From race cars to rockets

The operation also has grown to work with all of Honda’s diverse business lines, Nakagawa noted during a tour of the Torrance facility. That includes not only lawn motors and portable generators but:

• the design work on Honda’s latest endurance series race car, with a heavy focus on the wind-cheating aerodynamics that can yield an advantage out on the track;
• A new version of the Honda Jet, the new Echelon model set to become the first corporate aircraft of its kind capable of flying coast-to-coast without a refueling stop;
• Hydrogen fuel-cell technology that can be used not only to power vehicles like the Honda Clarity but provide stationary power at remote locations;
• That could someday include the moon, Honda engineers working up a version of that technology that would provide power to permanent settlements, even during the long lunar night;
• Honda is also working up its own reusable rocket system which, it plans, will soon be capable of launching satellites to orbit.

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Return of the Acura RSX

Automotive development is still core, and one of the latest projects will soon reach market in the form of the new, all-electric Acura RSX.

The Torrance facility opened its vehicle design center in 2007, noted Yasutake Tsuchida, currently the head of that operation, adding that the process has changed dramatically since the original CRX was developed a half-century ago. For one thing, designers now do much of their work in the virtual realm, something that has numerous benefits. It allows them to work more closely with engineers. And they can come up with multiple iterations far more rapidly, saving both time and money.

“We’re definitely spending a lot more time in the digital world,” said the design chief, adding, “We can work fast and achieve high quality.” But some things, never completely change, however. “We try to use AI as much as possible, but it’s very hard to generate something completely new.”

During the tour of his design operation, Tsuchida showed off a full-size clay model of the new RSX. As good as today’s digital display technology has become, he explained, it takes a physical “property” to fully sweat the details. “Even a tenth of a millimeter” difference in the shape of a curve or the position of a character line “can make a big difference,” said Tsuchida. “That cannot be seen on screen. That is why it has to be done in clay.”

What next?

While Honda may be best known for its passenger vehicles, its operations also include off-road sporting vehicles, generators and other product lines.

And the list is set to grow. Those invited to the 50^th anniversary even were given an advance look at some other projects in the works. Unfortunately, we’ve all signed our lives away promising to honor the company’s embargoes. We’ll have to wait a while before revealing what we’ve seen.

But the critical point is that Honda’s U.S. R&D operation may have reached the mid-century mark but there’s plenty more life left – and new projects – to come in the years ahead.