Sayonara to the Civic, again

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."

The Fit subcompact and N-Box minicar series are Honda's big hits in the country. In the last fiscal year, Honda sold just 1,619 Civic compact sedans nationwide, vs. 250,000 N-Box minicars.

The Civic sedan has gradually gotten bigger over the generations as engineers tailor it to tastes in the key U.S. and China markets. Last year, Honda sold 325,650 Civics in the U.S.

In Japan, Honda will keep the standard Civic hatchback and sporty Type R, both imported from Great Britain. But the decision to kill the sedan highlights the increasingly difficult challenge the country's automakers face in developing vehicles that appeal to both Japanese and American consumers.