What's up with Honda? Last week I looked at Porsche's present and future. This week is Honda's turn. Are they losing the battle? They've just been demoted from #2 in Japan to #3 by the resurgent Nissan. At least from the enthusiast view, there appears to be very good reason for this. But since the enthusiast (us!) represents a minority of real car buyers, why is this? Are Nissans better than Hondas? And where does Toyota fit into this picture?
Toyota is a very big number one in Japan. Even though they are by far the biggest, it often seems they still are the hungriest and still have the drive to be even bigger. With their huge supply of spare cash, they can (and do) introduce well-developed, reliable product into every market segment and market niche. The only savior for other enthusiast marques is that Toyota is still driven and managed by traditional Japanese who require that their product be distilled out of most any character. How long will this list? Who knows.
But I'm trying to discuss Honda here, not Toyota. The Japanese manufacturing industry in general (think Sony as an example), but the car industry in particular is the best example of "not invented here" I can think of. Honda seems to be the worst when it comes to car manufacturers too. They invent, design, develop, and manufacture more of their components than any other manufacturer I can think of. They are almost alone these days in making all their own transmissions. One tends to often think of the Japanese as copiers, and they are sometimes. But when it comes to something new, Honda needs to invent it within the company rather than buy it from a supplier or (heaven forfend) another car manufacturer.
Honda is developing their own fuel cell and hybrid technology. Even Toyota cooperates on fuel cell design with the Ballard consortium in Canada with Ford and Mercedes.
One must also remember that the corporate mantra is that Honda is and always be the Honda Motor Corporation and that cars are only one manifestation of "motors". Hmmm. Sort of reminds you of the Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW, or Bavarian Motor Works). The difference is that BMW thinks of their forays into motors for uses other than cars as kind of a sideline to their real company that makes cars these days. This wasn't always the case in the past when BMW was very big in the aircraft engine industry. World War II almost entirely killed that, however.
On the other hand, Honda makes a very broad range of "motors". (I'd rather think of them as "engines" because to me "motors" are driven by electricity only.) They make lawn mowers and generators on the small "motor" end of things. And they are trying to become a major manufacturer of aircraft engines, oops, motors now. That means both piston and jet powerplants, darn, I mean motors.
Does this take their focus off cars? Maybe. It might be that, but also it probably is the corporate insistence that cars don't need anything more than six cylinders. Yes, Porsche has done very well with their 6-cylinder boxer engine, but that is very much an anomaly today. Luxury car buyers, and even enthusiasts today, insist on at least a V-8 in their cars, perhaps even 12-cylinders. This is particularly true in Southern California.
Another place Honda has been left in the dust is not having a rear-drive platform for their enthusiast vehicles and luxury sedans. Look at the sales difference between BMW's 5-series and Honda's RL sedan. Yes, Honda's RL is both boring to look at and boring to drive, but BMW's success is with rear-drive platforms. Honda has none except for their sports cars, the S2000 and NSX. Shouldn't that send them a message that the enthusiast needs a rear-driver? I think it should, but it hasn't.
It appears that Honda may be learning from the Germans in making their cars complex. That hasn't been what Honda has done in the past. Light and efficient has been their objective, but it appears that may be disappearing. So as not to betray their "front-drive is the only way for sedans" credo, the new RL will be equipped (possibly optionally) with a complex awd system that drives whichever wheel needs traction. At least that sounds like a way to get rid of torque steer that has cropped up with ever increasing horsepower in Honda's models. To damp out at least a little of the torque steer, what feel that was left in the steering wheel after getting the drive to the front wheels was taken care of was almost entirely eliminated.
Is this going to be like BMW's foray into electronic steering and Mercedes' development of electronic braking that has proven to be less satisfying to enthusiasts than the mechanical systems? I fear that it will. It would seem to me that Honda really needs a rear-drive platform that they could evolve into a sedan and coupe. They already have great engines. There I go again, make that motors.
Once again, looking at the competition: Nissan. It is clear that their recent success has been from good product, but also from good rear-drive product. Is this because Nissan is no longer Japanese owned? Carlos Ghosn is the head of Renault-owned Nissan and is seen as the savior of the marque. Nissan already had success with rear-drivers like the Z-car and somewhat less success with the Infiniti Q. What has been a remarkable success is their rear-drive FM platform that has been the parent of the new Z-car, and Infiniti's G35 and FX. It also will be the basis for the upcoming M45 replacement.
Toyota has a complete set of rear- and front-drive platforms. With that luxury, they can offer premium sedans in both front-drive for luxury emphasis, and rear-drive for performance emphasis. For the present, those are the ES and IS Lexus models. Look into the future and you'll probably see more "duplicates" like that.
Mazda, under Ford ownership, doesn't have any rear-drivers other than the Miata. They probably won't get one either because Ford won't share a Jaguar with them. It isn't necessary. They'll just sell you a Jaguar instead of a Mazda and it all goes into Ford's pocket anyway.
So Honda may well make the best family sedan refrigerator in the U.S. now, but when the owner wants to move upscale, they either can remain a Honda loyalist, which a few do with the RL, or they will move either to Lexus or the Germans. That is not good for Honda. What is even more not good for Honda is Chrysler going to rear-drive for their bread-and-butter 300 series cars. It helps that they can use Mercedes technology for them, but allows Chrysler to make a higher-powered car in the $35,000 range that really can use the power.
