When Honda launched its premium Acura Automobile division in March, 1986, it was a uniquely historic event for the global automotive industry. Honda's ground-up creation of an entirely new luxury automobile division helped the company get around the 1981 voluntary restraint agreement that limited Japanese manufacturers in the number of vehicles they could export to the U.S.each year by building the cars domestically, instead.
While Acura's first vehicles were built in Japan, the movement by Honda/Acura ultimately led to the creation of other bigger, more expensive cars under newly formed brands like Lexus (from Toyota), and Infiniti (from Nissan), and the construction of more domestic automotive plants to produce them
