The Civic may be a Honda hero in the U.S., but in the automaker's home market, it's more of a zero.
In fact, the Civic sedan is such a slow seller in Japan, Honda Motor Co. has decided to end local production and sales of the car, after a short-lived, much ballyhooed revival of the nameplate.
Honda first stopped selling the Civic sedan in Japan in 2010, as the company shifted toward smaller rides for the domestic market. But with the Civic's aggressively styled 2017 redesign, Honda thought it had such a good car that it could make a run at a reintroduction.
Honda thought wrong. It turned out that even the Civic — a legendary franchise that made Honda a household name worldwide — is now out of sync with the market where it originated.
In Japan, sedans are widely spurned, and the mantra remains "small is beautiful."