JULY 11, 2002

Honda expanding...

Life on the race tracks of the world may be troublesome for the Honda Motor Company but in the showrooms the company is doing remarkably well.

LIFE on the race tracks of the world may be troublesome for the Honda Motor Company but in the showrooms the company is doing remarkably well - even if there is a recession. The company has just announced plans to boost its sales by 700,000 cars in the next three years, taking its annual production to 3.4m vehicles. The major push from growth is coming in Asia and specifically in China. The company is also planning to nearly double its motorcycle sales to 11m units per year. With such an aggressive plan for expansion one would expect that the pressure on the engineers in Formula 1 will increase although it may also mean that there will be even more money to spend on the program to ensure that Honda gets back to where it used to be in F1 in the 1980s.