Honda Motor Co. announced Friday that it will invest $400 million to build a new manufacturing facility in Lincoln, Ala., boosting annual production capacity in North America from 960,000 to 1.13 million units by 2003.
The nation's third-largest automaker also revealed a 36 billion yen project to update and streamline its facilities in Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, and Sayama, Saitama Prefecture, to replace model-specific equipment with more versatile machines over the next three years to increase production flexibility.
The new Alabama plant -- the firm's third auto-assembly factory in North America -- will start operations in the spring of 2002 to produce minivans and sport-utility vehicles, the very market where major U.S. automakers are currently generating a large portion of their profits.