The sun had not yet burned through the morning fog as the giant manufacturing plant slowly and silently appeared. Between the bean and corn fields of central Ohio, in a place one would expect to find farm auctions and county fairs is one of the world’s premier makers of everything from cars to aircraft. Honda’s R&D Americas had invited a lucky few for an unprecedented look inside their most secret facility and we were on the short list. There was no way we were going to miss it!
You have to like any place that uses one of their Indy car engines as a coffee table base. We were going to tour one of the most restricted areas in the powersports and automotive world; Honda’s R&D Americas center near Raymond, Ohio. In fact, they’re so concerned about security, most of the employees have never seen it all, and they wouldn’t even disclose how many people actually work there. By our rough count of parking spaces and occupancy, we estimate it to be around 2000 employees. After a quick briefing and a warning about unauthorized photos, we were off.
The Honda R&D Americas center can best be described as a one stop shop for all your mechanical dreams. If someone in the design lab can imagine it, they can build a prototype, test it, and get it ready for production, all in the same building. It’s part design center, materials lab, prototype shop, and destructive testing lab, all in one complex. The brain center is undoubtedly the engineering offices.
Honda doesn’t really have traditional offices in their R&D complex; instead it’s more like an engineering arena. The room is the largest engineering complex we’ve ever seen and at nearly the size of three football fields, it’s positively enormous. Rather than cubicles, there are 48” walls between each desk, and regardless of rank, every employee has the same space and configuration, including the corporate senior officers. Every employee throughout the complex also wears a white work uniform which looks like it could double as a mechanic's coverall, bee keeper's uniform, or decontamination suit. Throughout the room there are groups designing cars, SUVs, ATVs, motorcycles, Side x Sides, and just about everything else related to Honda products. Sample production parts, prototype pieces, and small assemblies can be found on many desks. We saw employees working on exhaust systems and front suspension designs, although they were obviously for an automotive application. CATIA appeared to be the CAD software of choice, just as it is at other large scale manufacturers running mainframe systems. Most employees appeared hard at work but also friendly and quick to acknowledge our presence with a wave or greeting. They don’t get a lot of visitors here and we were as much a curiosity to them as they were to us. Just down the hall is where things really get interesting though.
Honda’s material lab is where all new materials, chemicals, and components get their first test, and where all secrets are revealed in other products as well. As one employee stated, “When we want to know what somebody else’s engines or parts are made of, we’ll just buy one, cut it up, and test it.” With that process, they can determine complete metallurgical specs, fabrication operations such as welding, grinding, machining, any protective coatings, and even the heat treat data. You can’t keep secrets from these guys and this type of testing is very common in the cut-throat automotive world, but you can bet lessons learned are quickly applied to powersports products as well. Whether it’s metal or composite, they’ve got multiple labs chock full of equipment and lab coat loving employees who just can’t wait to delve into it. A walk through this area explained why we’ve got a couple Hondas that have put in enough time to retire, despite nothing more than oil and air filter changes, and a new spark plug every decade or so just as some sort of mechanical treat for time served. As interesting as the materials labs were, it’s the guys downstairs who really get to have fun!
Testing of passenger vehicles rivals that of spacecraft for everything from vibration, to climate control and environmental conditions, to acoustics, but most impressively, passenger safety. Everyone has seen impact tests of vehicles colliding with fixed barriers, and Honda must do that also as part of vehicle certification. Above is an overhead booth that appears like an aircraft control tower, where technicians watch as vehicles are hurtled into a 200,000 pound concrete block at various speeds. A track in the floor guides the cars, and a multitude of cameras and sensors record the carnage. You just know it’s all smiles and cheers from the guys in the tower each time this happens. We were not allowed to witness an actual test, but there were a handful of hapless vehicles under covers standing by and awaiting their fate. Adjoining areas held a test sled or “buck” which simulated vehicle crashes at varying angles and speeds. There is one group of testing employees that never leave the facility though: the crash test dummies. Costing upwards of $100K each, we counted 26 dummies of various size and gender, from kid sized to adult, and all could be outfitted with dozens of sensors to record crash data. Curiously, despite a lack of clothing (which a few in our group regrettably took every advantage of) they all had the same, discount store black shoes and blank facial expression. There is no joy in the dummy corp.
Near the impact tests were smaller chambers where ATVs and Side x Sides could be fully tested for everything from how engine vibrations transmit through a frame, to a “cold soak” room where the temperature could be dropped to -50 degrees, and various durability tests where a machine would repeat an action endlessly until a given number of cycles was reached. While there, a Rancher ATV was undergoing steering component testing as a mechanical arm continually turned the bars a couple hundred thousand times. One of the more punishing tests is an “electronic trail” where a Pioneer was perched atop hydraulic pistons clamped to each wheel to mimic a very rough trail at high speeds. Interestingly, the entire base for this type of machine and similar machines is isolated for vibration through special mounts and enormous, underfloor counterweights to keep vibration out of the surrounding earth, which would throw sensitive equipment in the surrounding facilities out of calibration. Above all, the R&D work stations and testing areas are clean, organized, and sometimes you catch a faint smell of oil or exhaust, or the quiet rumble of machinery in motion to remind one of the work they do here. For an inquisitive gearhead it’s a bit soothing, but they don’t just test Honda ATVs here though. As we drove in, a trailer with a Polaris RZR 800 pulled in, and then made its way around the rear of the building. We also know they have an Arctic Cat Wildcat, a Yamaha Rhino, and practically every other make and model of ATV and Side x Side on hand. It’s all part of the testing process, but it also reveals where future design is focused. Eventually in powersports testing, though, you’ve got to go outside.
Behind the Honda R&D center is an enormous outdoor testing facility with skid pads, incline tests, cobble and rough road areas, rain and standing water pads. The entire facility is surrounded by a 7.5 mile banked oval track. Called the Transportation Research Center, everything from semis to motorcycles is tested here by several manufacturers. Top speed on the track’s upper lane is reserved for vehicles running over 140 mph and we even saw a couple Porshes in the test track garage area. There was a Pioneer 700 doing laps on an infield course, but we also know they have a secondary ATV and Side x Side testing facility just down the road. We were able to ride the new Rancher through a wooded test area and it was a unique feeling to ride on the grounds where some of the best models in the sport have been developed. In fact, the Pioneer was the first powersports model to be developed here from concept design to finished product, but there are more coming. Surrounding the Honda test facilities are farms, and rather than simply mowing huge tracts, Honda rents the ground to local farmers who load the harvested crops into empty shipping containers that would have ordinarily been sent back to Japan empty. If a ship is heading back home, it may as well carry something of value.
Honda expects the best efforts from their employees, but we were also impressed with their concern for employee well-being as well. Safety is their first priority, but a little “downtime” is not forgotten. There are several outdoor sports facilities, but the most unique thing was a large, fully equipped shop being built where employees would have the ability to work on their own car, truck, ATV, or motorcycle. It was a nice perk for long hours spent.
To say we were impressed with Honda R&D Americas is an enormous understatement. It’s engineering dreamland, and as much as we saw, every curtain, closed door, and covered vehicle called to our soul to peek inside and learn more. We could spend weeks here. Hopefully, someday we’ll be invited back.
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