With all the tie-ups going on between Japanese and mostly European car makers, conventional wisdom had it that Honda would not take part in the nampa with the gaijin. Everybody saw them stay pure and Nipponese. Not so, said Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo yesterday to The Nikkei [sub]. They would very much like a little tete-a-tete with attractive suitors. They were the wallflower, because they were too shy and awkward. Now, Honda is ready to play. (Read More…)
Yes Howie Long, Honda has managed to sell everything from lawnmowers and mopeds to cars and jets under the same brand name for decades, without ever damaging the value of the Honda brand. In fact, given that Acura is Honda’s only auto branding exercise thus far and it’s hardly the strongest brand in the world, the best branding advice for Honda seems to be stick with the Honda thing. Which might explain why this Everus concept from the Motor Company’s forthcoming China-only brand, Li Nian, is such an Acura-like disappointment [via Paul Tan].
Anonymous sources tell the always on-point pickuptrucks.com that Honda will not be replacing its Ridgeline pickup when its lifecycle ends after the 2011 model year. Honda is refusing comment on the Ridgeline’s future, but did tell AL.com that production will continue through 2011, and that “as of right now, we have no plans to discontinue Ridgeline.” But from a sales perspective, Honda might do well to let the unibody pickup die of natural causes. Though the unconventional Ridgeline came close its initial sales goals of about 50k units per year for the first three years of its life, by 2008 sales had dropped to 33,875. Last year the sales drop snowballed, with a 51 percent volume drop to 16,464 units. So yeah, we’ve been noticing that Honda seems less than completely enthused about its tentative attempt at the truck market. The end could well be near. Hilarious counterpoint to Howie Long’s video (above) available here.
Honda’s sales bounced 22 percent, as the normally incentive-adverse firm broke out financing, cashback and lease deals to keep up with Toyota and GM’s incentive war. Accord and Civic were 23 and 4 percent, with 29,120 and 22,463 units respectively. Odyssey, Pilot and CR-V all broke the 10k mark, with Pilot growing sales the most (48 percent). Fit was down slightly from last March’s recession-fueled sales, managing only 4,670 units. The Insight sold a pathetic 1,652 units.
All this endless speculation as to whether Honda will someday build a real RWD pickup: they already did, in 1963. And in that inimitable Honda way, it stood the world on it ears: DOHC, four carbs, 30hp from 360cc at 8,600 rpm, 60 mph top speed. As an antidote to the mild-mannered Hondas sent our way in the seventies and early eighties, like the gen1 Prelude, the T360/T500 trucks were anything but boring. But the story of how this eminently practical little truck ended up with the engine from Honda’s crazy little S360 sports car is a wild tale only Honda could spin. (Read More…)
My only experience with Quaaludes was highly memorable. Yet I struggle to elicit any memories of my only drive in a Honda Quaalude. Or did I just dream that (the drive)? So just how did this Honda get that nickname anyway? Well, let’s just say that Quaaludes have more than one effect, and while the Prelude may well have induced sleep, its fairly unlikely that it was ever very successful as an aphrodisiac. I’ve certainly never heard it referred to as the Honda Viagra, despite its very close ties to the Honda Vigor. (Read More…)
If you, dear reader, had expected (or, perish the thought, hoped) that SUA hype and rapid fire recalls would bring Toyota down, then stop reading immediately. What follows will not be good for your circulatory system. (Read More…)
Honda is perplexed and overwhelmed by the demand for their just launched CR-Z small sports hybrid car, says The Nikkei [sub]. Honda had planned for 1000 a month, which turned out to be a big mistake. After one month, they already have more than 10,000 orders, and a hard time filling them. They’ve sold in one month what they wanted to sell in a year, more or less, and the orders keep pouring in. (Read More…)
The “First Drive” is one of the perennial stumbling blocks of automotive journalism. In return for exclusive access to the latest, most-hyped automobiles that everyone wants to get their hands on, outlets like Edmunds Inside Line are asked to swath their “First Drive” write-up in the most glowing terms possible. Or, as we’ve put it before, the price of an exclusive story is a straight face. Unfortunately the results of this kind of compromise are difficult to read with straight face. We’ve seen no better example of this than Inside Line’s recent “First Drive” of the Honda CR-Z, which yielded such unfortunate lines as:
The CR-Z is like a Tesla Roadster, but without the $109,000 price tag.
You know, besides having a different powertrain driving different wheels, a huge performance disparity, and, well, everything else.
Lavish cash on the hood of Japanese cars may help their U.S. sales (or soften the fall in Toyota’s case). The largess also “will put pressure on earnings,” says The Nikkei [sub].
Toyota, Nissan, Honda raised sales incentives in February to an average of 2,221 dollars per vehicle, up 11 percent from January. (Read More…)
Usually, we don’t report every recall (you’d be pretty tired of it pretty quick,) but in the interest of things being in the spotlight, please be advised that Honda will recall more than 410,000 Odyssey minivans and Element small trucks from the 2007 and 2008 model years, says Associated Press. (Read More…)
Just when you thought hydrogen was dead, Honda comes up with a system that allows you to make homemade hydrogen, using nothing but free sunshine. In the grand tradition of hydrogen cars, the sunny technology is just not quite there yet. (Read More…)
The first videos of the Honda CR-Z lapping Suzuka have surfaced, and they’re about as exciting as C-Span after a handful of Valium. And this is apparently a tuned version. Between this and the recent pre-launch equivocation by the CR-Z’s chief engineer, our expectations for Honda’s Insight Coupe couldn’t get much lower [via Autoblog].
When the production version of the Honda CR-Z debuted at the Detroit Auto Show, TTAC’s judgment was swift and harsh. Paul Niedermeyer’s piece “Why The Honda CR-Z Is So Ugly And Should Never Have Been Built” met with more agreement than dissent, and with good reason. Even though the hybrid coupe is still months away from going on sale, Honda engineers and dealers are already talking about their misgivings about the project, belying the project’s lack of originality and its poor chances for commercial success. CR-Z Chief Engineer Norio Tomobe describes his struggle to initiate the project to Automotive News [sub].
We had serious doubts about whether this would bring new value. I really struggled for a new idea, and we decided to start over from scratch. The hybrid finally gave us the wow factor.
This also marked the point where Honda’s US bosses started to lose interest in the project.
(Read More…)
This is the companion piece to the Most Influential Modern Global Car: the 1975 VW Rabbit/Golf. Now if I had the same photographic luck as with the Rabbit, there would be a big American car in the same shot, say something like this. Well, the Florence Apt’s [sic] will do fairly well as a stand-in, with its traditional architecture. Because if any one car can take credit for re-inventing the traditional “American” car, it’s this Honda Accord. (Read More…)
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