Business Notes AUTOS

When auto-carrying freighters from Japan finish unloading their cargo in U.S. ports, they typically steam back across the Pacific with empty holds or perhaps a load of live beef cattle. Reason: while Japan exported 2.2 million autos to America last year, the U.S. shipped a mere 4,006 autos in the other direction. That whopping imbalance showed a small sign of easing last week when Honda became the first Japanese automaker to send some of its U.S.-made autos back home for sale. The carmaker marked the occasion on a dock in Portland, Ore., where Republican Senator Bob Packwood and Honda's U.S. chief, Tetsuo Chino, drove the first auto in a load of 540 gray and white Accord coupes into the hold of the freighter Green Bay. Also put on board were 100 U.S.-made Honda motorcycles.

Honda maintains that the shipment of autos from its Marysville, Ohio, plant is more than a gesture to assuage protectionist sentiments in the U.S. Contends Chino: "It's a small, initial step for future big, big sales in Japan." Honda officials say they plan to ship 4,000 cars to Japan during 1988 and as many as 50,000 annually by 1991. Because the decline of the dollar has lowered U.S. production costs, the autos can be sold in Japan at a competitive price. The Accords are outfitted with luxuries not found on Japanese models: spoilers, fancy wheel covers and leather interiors.