They weren't that horrible. Most years they were the lowest price new car out there, they rode well, had a ton of space inside and comfortable seats. The 2.2 had a ton of power for that little car. The Holley carb sucked and didn't get replaced with TBI until 1988 and the door hardware felt super cheezy (the mechanism that operated the door latch and lock plunger) otherwise they weren't bad cars at all. Cheap, basic transportation.
Stellantis/Chrysler/Jeep shutting down the Belvidere, IL plant
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They weren't that horrible. Most years they were the lowest price new car out there, they rode well, had a ton of space inside and comfortable seats. The 2.2 had a ton of power for that little car. The Holley carb sucked and didn't get replaced with TBI until 1988 and the door hardware felt super cheezy (the mechanism that operated the door latch and lock plunger) otherwise they weren't bad cars at all. Cheap, basic transportation.
One of the guys I worked with at the time had the 024 version of the Omni. It was a nice car. It came with the "venetian blind" rear window "spoiler".
He beat the crap out of that thing for years. Body cancer, (brought on by Midwestern salt saturated Winter roads), finally did it in. All he ever put in it was gas and oil.
But every car in existence back then, rusted like a tire iron left in a flooded ditch. I swear, you could almost watch some of those 80's Honda Accord's rust. I remember for a while they were dealer installing new front fenders on some models free of charge, because they rusted out so fast.
Ya I agree the 2.2 did have good power and the car drove pretty well, and it was comfortable enough for the younger me to get back and forth to work and school or whatever. But the build quality of the car in general was terrible, I stand by that.
Ironically the Horizon got replaced with an Accord, and the Accord was light years ahead of the Horizon in every single way, but as you say about rust... once that started on the Accord, it was ferocious. I'd still take the rusty Accord over the Horizon every day of the week and four times on Sunday. I put almost 300,000 miles on the Accord with hardly any problems with anything, before a wayward deer sent me into a ditch on a snowy night and turned the front suspension into a pretzel. The only way our Horizon would have gone 300,000 miles is if you pushed it off a 250,000 mile high cliff.
I'm not saying the build quality was anything spectacular but you have to keep things in perspective for the time and what the vehicle sold for. You could buy 3 Omni/Horizons for the price of 1 Accord.
Imagine how many of those you could sell today, if somebody bothered to (or was allowed to) make them.
Not 3, but dang close to 2......I had to look up the MSRP for the Horizon in '84, looks like they were around $6k-ish. I remember being with my dad when he bought the Accord, which was $11k-something out the door, which would have been a very sizeable difference in price for cars in those days. I thought my mom was going to freak at what he was buying, two kids in college and three of us in private high school, we didnt have money to waste when I was growing up. He probably should have been looking at Horizon's instead of Accords....
They'd sell, and they would sell big time. I think those days are gone...
Toyota and Honda use a lot of air freight for things that can’t be shipped on a container ship to Oakland/Long Beach/Houston like an engine/transmission or big assemblies can. Small things like electronics can make the trip from Central Japan(Nagoya/Osaka/Tokyo) to a Midwestern airport and be in Kentucky/Indiana/Ohio/Alabama in a matter of days.
Supposedly, BMW was the biggest user of the Charleston airport for cargo. I’ve heard from a friend who lives in Kentucky that Cincinnati’s airport often has Toyota brass transiting through it.
Rock River Arms is in Illinois.
Hopefully, someone uses the plant for some kind of manufacturing and returns jobs to the people that will be unemployed!
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Keep in mind there was an import embargo at the time that limited the number of Hondas that could be sold here so Hondas were sold at MSRP and above while the Omni/Horizon was discounted and had rebates on the hood...I stand by my claim that you could buy 3 for the price of one Accord. These things littered the parking lot of my lower-middle class HS in the mid 90's. No one wanted them but they were passed down and just ran and ran and endured a ton of abuse. No one wanted to be seen in one but they got you around and never died.
Sounds like California
They're both run with pretty much the same idiotic, progressive mindset. Anti energy and business. And while taxing anything with a heartbeat into oblivion..... Or until it runs somewhere else.
All while trying to attract as much crime, drugs, gangs, and homelessness as humanly possibly. Both excell at those tasks. But at least California accomplishes it with better weather. Which is why they win in the homelessness department.... And require a "Poop Squad" to keep it shoveled off their streets and sidewalks.
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