Honda in Brazil and Mexico — Starting with Production of Motorcycles and Moving to Automobile Production

Honda’s business in Latin America has been operated in South America, particularly Brazil, and in Central America, particularly Mexico. If, however, Honda’s business bases in the world were divided into six, the Central America business operation would be included in North America. Here, I will cover their local production activities in Brazil and Mexico as Honda’s Central and South American business operations. I have an impression that this region is not highly regarded among Honda’s world business bases. I could feel that was true when I was talking with the people in Honda in Japan. In contrast to the topic about India’s rapid expansion, they did not talk about that production reached one million motorcycles in 2006 at the assembly plant in Manaus. Even on the Honda website, we can see ‘South America’ in the regional break-down of ‘Honda’s global operations,’ but in the chart of their major production bases, Manaus, Brazil, is put into ‘Others.’ Meanwhile, however, the local production and the sales performance of motorcycles in Brazil are expanding outstandingly, and have moved into the front line in the world as you see below. Still, other than this, while firm and other interest operations are consistently being conducted in the region, the production and sales operations of four-wheel vehicles in Brazil and motorcycle and four-wheel vehicles in Mexico are still small. Recently, small-scale production of motorcycles just started in Argentina (four-wheel vehicles in 2009) and in Peru.