All cars manufactured today are required to have similar systems which monitor engine "misfires," or emissions of toxins into the environment. While Honda and one California regulatory board have said the company's violations were unintentional, other observers have said Honda acted intentionally and that it has made only the most necessary concessions to environmental and safety standards.

"It is a sad commentary on the auto companies that claim they want to create greencars for tomorrow, yet they are producing dirty cars today," said Clarence M. Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, D.C. "It shows the need for constant enforcement and tough regulation for the car companies, because the bottom line is what they can get away with, they will." Ford Motor Company was also fined about $8 million last week for similar violations, but the Honda settlement is the largest ever with the EPA. The EPA said if the violations had gone undetected, the Hondas would have dumped an additional 8,000 tons of hydrocarbons into the air over the lifetime of the cars.

Currently, all motor vehicles emit about 8.3 million tons of hydrocarbons annually. Hydrocarbons form ground-level ozone and are a chief contributor to asthma-causing smog, according to the EPA. Barbara Ponce, a spokeswoman for Honda, reiterated statements the company made last week. She said Honda had "misinterpreted" the EPA regulations on toxic emissions.

In its release, Honda said thediagnostic systems were temporarily disabled to avoid false detection of minor engine misfires, and to "avoid alarming the driver needlessly." "It is part of the corporate philosophy, balancing performance with comfort and convenience, and a respect for society and preserving environmental benefits for the future," Ponce said. While consumers have come to expect the worst from Ford -- it manufactured the deadly Pinto and was also fined $7 million in the 1970s by the EPA for vehicles that pollute too much -- American consumers generally believed the reverse of Honda. The car manufacturer's advertisements have fostered the view among consumers that its cars are energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.

Recently, Honda developed an electric passenger car and an automobile that burns natural gas as an alternative to petroleum. The company claims the latter automobile has almost no emissions. E. Bruce Fergusson, team leader for vehicle and engine enforcement for the EPA, said the Honda engineers whooverrode the onboard diagnostic systems "did not do it by accident." Fergusson said designing an onboard diagnostic system is a complex task. "Honda during the development process at some point realized that they had not developed an engine system that was good enough to detect the difference between a real engine misfire from something else that was going on in the engine," Fergusson said.

"Honda, which sells cars in large part based on their reliability, saw that if you have a 'Service Engine Soon' light coming on your dashboard when there really wasn't anything wrong, that it was going to be very disconcerting for customers," Fergusson said. "Honda said, 'Our system does not work well enough, so we better disable it under most conditions.'" The California Air Resources Board, based in Sacramento, began the investigation into Honda in 1997. It said it was uncertain whether Honda acted deliberately. "We had some questions about whether it was intentional or not, and it appears to be a phenomenonwhen the vehicles age," said Jerry Martin, a spokesman for CARB.

"Our feeling was that if you are going to deliberately tamper with the engine or change a portion of the operating system and risk these types of fines, and maybe more important the embarrassment that has been associated with this issue, you would probably want to do this with newer cars." But other critics of Honda said the company has made a regular practice of meeting environmental standards but going no further. Ditlow said Honda is good at engineering its cars to meet regulatory standards, and then "cycle beating." Cycle beating, he said, occurs when the car company has "a test or a regulatory requirement, and the company designs cars to meet the regulatory requirement," but "in the real world they may not perform as well as they should."Ditlow added that in 1995 Honda, rather than notifying the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about defective seat belts in 3 million cars manufactured between 1986 and 1991, first repairedabout 100,000 under warranty.

"Honda was handling it under warranty when they should have been notifying owners and handling it under recall," Ditlow said. Eventually, Honda recalled the cars. Similarly, in the 1980s, Ditlow said, Honda was one of the first companies to relax its bumper collision standards when the Reagan administration changed the regulations.

The laws previously stipulated cars must not be damaged in 5-mph collisions. Reagan reduced that amount to 2.5 mph. "Honda immediately went to 2.5 mph, while most other manufacturers actually stayed higher," Ditlow said. "We made such a fuss about it that Honda brought back better bumpers."In addition to the EPA fines, Honda agreed to extend warranties for the cars with faulty systems to 14 years. It will also provide periodic free diagnostic checks and repairs.

The Department of Justice said the warranty extensions will cost the company $267 million. Honda disputed that figure and said the cos would probably be much lower.