Every Honda Civic hatch tests on fighter jet strip

Back in those dark days Australia, Britain, Germany and Japan were at each others throats in deadly combat. Today mankind has, on the whole, woken up to itself and we have other ways of engaging in combat. Such as on sporting fields and in one of the toughest arenas of all - the automotive sales race.

For whatever reason, the former Axis countries are doing much better in the automotive business than the Allies - Germany, Japan and Italy now dominate the car business.

Which brings us back to the British motor industry. Once a shambles caused by poor design, class conflict and over-aggressive trades unions, Britain is now doing pretty well in automotive manufacturing although the big players in car manufacturing in the Old Dart these days are mainly owned by Japan (Honda and Nissan) and Germany (Mini, Rolls-Royce, Bentley).

Which brings us back to Honda Civics and the aircraft runway at Swindon. Honda’s giant plant is located about an hour’s drive west of London and we recently spent a fascinating day touring the factory, talking to the people who work there and learning about the philosophy of the giant Japanese car, motorbike and power equipment maker.

Honda’s policy is to build cars in the areas where they are sold whenever this is possible. Britain has a long and glorious history of industry in many fields, not just cars, though it had faded in recent years. So Honda chose the England as a major player in its business.

Honda is the world’s largest manufacturer of engines by quite a large margin, due to its major presence in bikes and power equipment. We witnessed the assembly lines in Swindon where up to 1000 engines a day, petrol and diesel, are produced for the Civic, CR-V and Jazz.

One thing that fascinated me was watching men (there were very few women in the factory) setting the tappets for a Civic engine using spanners and a feeler gauge. Somehow I thought that a giant computer would have carried out this intricate task, but no, Honda says human beings can do it better. Good to see!

Participants in the deadly struggles between the English upper and working classes, as well as the financially fatal fights between management and unions, would have been delighted (or horrified?) to see the way the Japanese company operates.

We had talks with several levels of Honda employees, including the managing director, factory floor workers and several others in between. The fascinating thing is that they all wore the same uniform of white pants and shirts no matter what their level of in the company. A uniform with their first name on a label on the right side of the shirt.

All ate in the same canteen. A far cry from the days when some English factories had as many as seven segregated levels of canteens / restaurants for employees, staff, top management and the owners of the companies.

While every company of any consequence - automotive or otherwise - talks about caring for people and the environment these days, Honda is very serious about the matter, playing far more than lip service. We witnessed correct recycling of waste, not only at the industrial stages but also in the staff canteen and many other rooms where thorough recycling is very much part of the day-to-day scene. Honda in the UK is proud of the fact that nothing goes to landfill.

We also saw the genuine care shown by Honda’s first aid staff when one of our number showed signs of illness after the long flights across the world from Brisbane to the United Kingdom.

Talking of flights brings me back to the runway used by Spitfires and Lancasters. Though its origins are still visually obvious, these days it has been transformed into a series of test tracks with various surfaces, speed capabilities and other everyday, and not so everyday, motoring areas.

Every Civic that comes off the line - not simply a selected few - is road tested on the old runway area. Honda feels that while this is time consuming and expensive it’s very important that a human driver, not a robot, makes the final decision as to whether a car should be delivered to customer in the best possible condition.