Making history in America, Honda USA has announced that for the first time since it started building cars here, 2013 marked the year when more units were exported from North America than were imported from Japan. Honda manufactured and exported 108,705 vehicles - including Hondas and Acuras - locally, versus 88,537 brought in from Asia. Investing nearly $3 billion in three years into expanding its North American production, Honda built 1,309,917 cars in the United States alone.

Following two decades of motorcycle marketing, the automaker-formerly-known-as-Japanese began its American automobile operations in 1970 with the N600. It was importing all of its cars from Japan until the 1980s. Honda even fell victim to some anti-Japanese sentiment in its early years, with Americans blaming imports for job losses in the US industry. Now, with the Civic, Accord and CR-V lines fully manufactured in North America and a massive export line heading out of the US, Honda has become as American as Chevrolet and apple pie. If only they could come up with some more interesting designs.