Honda Accord: Marysville

Marysville opened in 1979 with 64 associates dressed in identical white uniforms building motorcycles.
Accord production launched on November 1, 1982, and today the pioneering facility is Honda’s global “mother” plant for the model. Honda wasn’t the first foreign automaker to assemble cars in the U.S., but Marysville was the first modern greenfield assembly plant built by a foreign automaker here.

Common knowledge said that shiftless American workers couldn’t build cars to Japanese quality standards. Yet today, plants owned by nine other foreign brands dot the American countryside like Chick-fil-A franchises. Honda has opened three more assembly plants in the United States, with a fourth on the way. And six of Marysville’s “original 64” are still employed by Honda in Ohio.
Just as Marysville builds many Accords, there are many Accords to build. They’ve all been updated for 2016 with minor styling updates and chassis tweaks. And they are all good, though some are better. A manual transmission worthy of a sports car can be found in our favorite, the four-cylinder, four-door Accord Sport. Or you can get a six-speed with a third pedal mated to the 278-hp V-6 in the coupe. That same V-6 with a proper six-speed automatic turns a loaded Accord sedan into such a luxury-car stand-in that it gives product planners in the Acura wing at headquarters as many fits as it does Honda’s rivals.