Honda looks 50 years into the future, and comes away with the 3R-C Concept, an EV commuter that has a surprising amount in common with the Neighborhood Electric Vehicles of that became hugely popular during the high gas prices of the Summer of 2008. The 3R-C will debut at the Geneva Auto Salon.
Growing recalls, loss of customers’ confidence, questions about their management, falling stock price and congressional hearings. 2010 hasn’t been kind to Toyota, so any good news now would be welcome. Consumer Reports is here to help. Yes, Consumer Reports. (Read More…)
Long time depressed car production in Japan continues to show robust signs of life, mostly caused by equally surprising domestic demand and a pick-up in exports. And there is another explanation … (Read More…)
Despite spending $264.1 million on measured media in the first 11 months of 2009, up 16.5 percent from the year-ago period [per AdAge monitoring] while sales fell nearly 27 percent, Automotive News [sub] reports that Acura is upping its 2010 ad spend by 50 percent. According to Acura’s advertising boss Steven Center, Acura’s awareness levels have been consistently high, but consumers didn’t perceive it being as prestigious as other luxury brands. By boosting advertising of new products like the ZDX and TSX Sportwagon, Center hopes to close the gap with the premium perceptions of its German competitors. Center explains:
Our messaging for years has been too ill-focused and not about the product. The ads weren’t making the point and the point is: What is it about Acura that makes it better? We want to have the emotion of BMW without the hardware,
You know, instead of being seen as higher-content, uglified Hondas. Yeah, more advertising should help with that.
Is it me or has the new Odyssey Concept, which is supposed to preview the styling of the next-gen model, taken a few too many protein pills? Let’s hope that the production version (arriving this fall) will capture a little more of the original Odyssey’s clean, stripped-down look. Remember, if we’ve learned anything from the Nissan Quest, it’s that minivans can easily be overstyled into irrelevance.
Honda said it will recall another roughly 378,000 vehicles in the U.S. to fix potentially faulty airbag systems that are linked to at least one known fatality and 11 injuries in the U.S., says the Nikkei [sub].
That brings the number of airbag-related recalled Honda and Acura models to more than 826,000. Honda said some airbags in its older vehicles deploy with too much pressure, and send metal fragments flying into the car. (Read More…)
Honda’s half-hearted approach to hybrids is about to be shaken up, possibly leading to the development of a hybrid system that goes beyond Honda’s traditional integrated motor assist (IMA) system. Automotive News [sub] reports that Honda CEO, Takanobu Ito has told his Research and Development staff to develop a hybrid which beats the Toyota Prius in fuel economy. Or else. This development probably has something to do the failure of the Honda Insight (Prius sales in 2009 were 139,682. Insight sales for the same period: 20,572); as Honda Executive VP, John Mendel said “Are we happy with how sales are going? No, we’re not happy.” Mr Ito made it clear that Honda’s hybrid line up is a top priority. “We want to develop and expand our hybrids,” said Ito. “We made some major sacrifices to shift people and resources to do that.”
Optimism is a rare commodity in the auto industry these days, and nearly all of it comes from the so-called BRIC nations of Brazil, India, China and (to a lesser extent) Russia. India in particular is being targeted as one of the few growth opportunities for the industry’s global players. Nissan/Renault, Volkswagen, Honda, Ford and GM have all recently announced major initiatives to target growth in India’s entry-level market, and GM even gave up control of its Chinese operations in order to beef up its Indian presence. But, as the Hindu Business Line reports, India could be staring down the kind of overcapacity that is causing so many headaches for automakers in mature markets.
What is the purpose of the Crosstour? I asked as I waited for my test car to be readied. Pause. Finally an answer, The Crosstour is now the high-end Accord. It is designed to compete with the Toyota Venza. Ah, I get it: monkey see monkey do. What better way to give the marque a kick in the shorts than to pinch an idea from the market leader. And so they did. Almost. Partly. Sort of.
The extent to which Honda has lost its mojo has been a hot topic in these pages of late. Though the big H has stumbled with Acura, hybrids, design and other crucial areas, one major positive seems to persist: the strength of the Honda name. Which is why it’s so strange to read Bloomberg report that Honda will launch a new brand in China next year. The new brand, named Li Nian meaning “ideal” or “spirit”, will be used for Honda’s new sub-Fit small car, designed to take advantage of China’s reduced tax on engines smaller than 1.6 liters.
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There has been a lot of, well, criticism, of Honda on these pages lately, including allegations that Honda had lost it. So far, more that fifty of the Best & Brightest offered advice on how to save the company from certain annihilation.
Today’s Nikkei says “domo arigato gozaimashita” for all the support, and runs a different story: “Honda Motor Co. has emerged from the economic turmoil at the head of the pack, thanks in good part to a nimble production network that can meet the latest consumer preferences at relatively low cost.” Here is why. (Read More…)
Pickuptrucks.com‘s Mike Levine snapped this shot of Honda’s NAIAS booth, indicating that the Motor Company might not be quite as proud of its unibody truck as it once was. Ridgeline sold 16,464 units last year, less than half of its 2008 volume. Honda’s Alabama plant, where the Ridgeline is assembled alongside the Pilot, saw its output drop 35 percent in 2009. Having tried the unibody option that so many formerly truck-dependent firms now see as an alternative to body-on-frame offerings, it seems doubtful that Honda would recommend it to any of them. When it comes to the truck market, there are no easy answers.
The prospect of US launches by Chinese and Indian auto brands like Tata and BYD have at least one of the established US-market players in a paranoid froth. Honda VP John Mendel revealed a few of the nightmare scenarios that keep him up at night to USA Today [UPDATE: more on Mendel’s fears at Automotive News [sub]]. One, inspired by BYD’s plans for a 2010 US launch without a distribution channel in place, is that newcomers could skip the dealer model altogether. Mendel worries that “warehouse stores or electronics stores” (sound familiar?) could be used to cut dealers out of the loop, “blowing up” business-as-usual for US distribution strategy.
There are guys at my gym that work out hard, three times a day, chiseling their chests and abs to perfection, compensating for the fact that God didn’t give them High School Musical faces. They are masterpieces of strength, structure – everything other than looks. From now on, I will secretly call them Crosstours.
In 2007, over 120,000 Civic Hybrid owners had a beef with Honda. So much so, in fact, that they sued the Japanese company. What do you reckon the reason could be? Unsafe cars? Think again. Poor build quality? No, they sued Honda because their Civic Hybrids didn’t get the stated fuel mileage. New York Times’ Wheels Blog reports that 2 plantiffs, John True of Ontario, California, and Gonzalo Delgado of Chino Hills California along with 120,000 other Honda Civic Hybrid owners argued in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that they were only getting 31 mpg instead of the advertised 49mpg in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. The plaintiffs believe that Honda’s advertising led them to believe that the Civic Hybrid would get better fuel economy than is likely in real world driving. Needless to say, the plaintiffs weren’t challenging the EPA methods of predicting mileage, just that Honda, allegedly, deceived customers by not making it clear that they were unlikely to achieve the EPA figures. Honda, naturally, have a different take.
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