Honda and Windmills
My first car was a 1976 Honda Civic CVCC Hatchback. In 1976, this car was definitely ahead of its time in the U.S. It was super cool to have this little car rather than the usual Detroit behemoths clogging the streets and parking lots. I could run circles around those cars and park almost anywhere. It had front drive, HondaMatic transmission, sharp steering, and bucket seats and got great gas mileage. The collective brain trust in Detroit dismissed Honda as a novelty that would pass. You know the mindset -- Let Honda go on its quixotic pursuit of a small niche market. Detroit didn't care.
In the following years, Honda introduced the Accord, Prelude and many variants on its Civic and Accord platforms. Here in Los Angeles, the few Honda dealers sold every car in stock and became unfriendly and arrogant in the process.
What was great, however, was Honda's philosophy of making cars with no options, just trim levels. It made it much easier to shop for a Honda because you only had to say that you were looking for a Blue LX Accord Automatic. There were a couple options that were dealer installed, such as radio upgrades and the all-important HondaAir; however, since those were installed by the dealer, you didn't have to call all over town to find a dealer with the factory-installed options you wanted.
Honda grew exponentially during the 1980s and Honda was the first Japanese car company to launch its luxury brand, Acura. The Acura Legend was an instant hit here in LA. I even remembered the excitement among my work colleagues when the Legend Coupe was introduced. There were shortages and Acura dealers gouged loyal customers. But still, the customers came back. Honda had earned a great reputation for small, fun, cool cars that lasted for a very long time with few mechanical problems.
While the reality was that Honda cars did have problems, those problems were/are overlooked by buyers who just want reliable appliance. Honda resale value is insanely high. I've seen stupid buyers snap up a three year old Civic with 100,000 miles for 60% of the original sales price. Blind loyalty like this is just crazy. But hey, it's a Honda, right?
I remember how exciting it was to see each new generation of Civic and Accord. The styling would be edgy, cool and forward. The Accord might have hidden headlights, great interior styling, lots of clever design touches inside and out, power locks and windows etc. All this forward thinking and innovation was at a time when Honda's competitors were still hesitant to offer these things as standard equipment or take any bold styling direction. This corporate persona endeared Honda to its large, loyal and growing American customer base. Remember how people loved the Civic CRX? Gone. How about a Civic or Accord wagon? Gone. Hatchbacks? Gone.
Now let's roll forward 10-15 years.
Honda has stuck to its manufacturing and marketing philosophy. This is a very smart and good think, I think. Its cars and trucks are all sold well equipped within the different trim levels and very few, if any, factory options. For example, if I want the top-level Accord, I simply look for the model: Accord EX V6 (Auto) (w/Navigation, XM and ULEV). Translated, that means you get all the goodies, including an ultra-low emission vehicle designation from California and the feds, leather seating surfaces, Honda's excellent 3.0L V6 engine, a 5-speed automatic transmission, dual-zone digital climate control, a sophisticated navigation system with voice recognition, power everything, a glass moonroof, power seats with memory and satellite radio. The only choice you have is the interior/exterior colors.
However, at some point, Honda's quirky, innovative designs have degenerated into uninspired, almost anonymous looks. These days, the Civic, Accord, Pilot, CR-V and even the new Odyssey minivan are just boring. Honda has repackaged the same car and kit so many times the same way that it's become rote. The car company that used to be a breath of fresh air, the company that was Don Quixote tilting at windmills, has now become staid, predictable and boring.
I think I started to lose faith in Honda when the last Prelude came out. It just missed the mark in styling and sales of the Prelude and coupes in general were falling. The Prelude was always the cool coupe Honda used to showcase some new technology or futuristic interior design and function. The last Prelude was the first Honda to feature the sports-shift automatic transmission and the dash gauges were mostly digital which swept across the dash rather than using the usual binnacle of analog gauges.
When the Prelude was killed, I think that was a sad day. Honda could easily afford to continue it, but the powers that be decided instead that we needed the S2000 to celebrate something. While I like the S2000's sheet metal and cockpit, it's cramped for tall people, there is no automatic transmission available and the engine revs so high you'd think it was a motorcycle. There is almost no torque in the low end, which, if you're stuck in daily LA traffic, it's not fun. But because it's a Honda and it's a roadster and it's reasonably priced, it sells reasonably well in LA. Many single people buy it as alternative to a Miata or a poor man's Z4.
So at what point did Honda morph into a refrigerator?
In the early to mid 1990s, Honda and Toyota began their battle to beat the US car companies for the top selling passenger car crown. We know that Ford was the leader with its best-selling Taurus and Sable. In the 1980s, GM's Oldsmobile division had the top selling Cutlass line. There might have been some Chevy models that were top sellers too. GM has all but given up on selling passenger cars to real people; rather GM just sells its lower-end cars to rental fleets. I can't remember the last time I saw a Pontiac Sunfire of a Chevy Cavalier that weren't rental cars.
The fight for top dog didn't last long. Ford botched a redesign of the Taurus and sales plummeted. The way was cleared for Honda and Toyota. For the past eight years, it's been Toyota and Honda fighting each other for the top seller crown. Toyota usually beats Honda, but both are extremely popular sedans for many American households. For the first 10 months of 2004, Honda sold 343,000 Accords and Toyota sold 354,000 Camrys. GM, Ford and Chrysler don't come close to any of those numbers (except for trucks) and when you subtract fleet sales from the numbers of all car companies, the Japanese competition would trounce the domestic manufacturers by even higher numbers.
We know that Americans like refrigerators for the basic transportation -- but both Alan and I think that Americans are looking for quality, reliability and value. And most Americans are getting their basic transportation from Japanese, not from the US, manufacturers. Honda, Toyota and Nissan are all expanding their manufacturing operations in the US while Detroit is closing plants and outsourcing manufacturing to Canada or Mexico.
When Honda started pushing for larger and larger volumes to catch rival Toyota, the style and "coolness" factor that used to belong to Honda vanished. I've driven a 2004 Accord and I didn't feel excited about anything the car had to offer. It was merely basic, reliable transportation. I was uninspired by the interior plastics and a bit saddened that Honda hadn't raised the bar for itself after all this time. It still has the same push/pull lever for the fuel cap and trunk release. That was super cool in 1986 because Honda was the only car that had them. But it's just old repackaged design now. There were other familiar touches, but nothing caught my attention as clever or cool. I wanted to find something that made me marvel at Japanese ingenuity. I was disappointed.
Last week I went to look at and test drive the new Acrua RL sedan. This is Honda's flagship sedan, so I expected something fantastic. On paper, it sounds great. There are no options or trim levels. From the consumer perspective, it leaves me a bit cold (as any good refrigerator would do) as there really is no way customization the car to your taste. A luxury customer might want to customize the car rather than just make a color choice. The sticker price is $50,000. That's about $20,000 more than the top of the line Accord and about $15,000 more than the more attractive TL. Since Honda doesn't have a rear drive sedan platform or a V8 to drive it, you get the excellent Honda 3.5L V6 (same as you get in your Odyssey minivan) and a heavy AWD system that slows the whole car down. Do you really need to have AWD in the RL? No. Does Honda think that it's competing with Audi? Certainly not if you look at the interior. If Honda thinks Acura is competing with Lexus, they are sadly mistaken.
So where is Honda now? In one sense, it is still on its quixotic path because it's the only one of the Big 3 Japanese car companies with no viable rear drive platform and, worse, no V8 engine to compete in the US luxury market. Its luxury brand Acura has multiple personalities that include a low-end RSX, the European Accord rebadged as a TSX and the US market Accord transformed into a TL. On the high end, there is Honda's "exotic super car" the NSX with whopping sales so far this year of 159 units. Then there is the new RL that is uninspired and dull with a paucity of power and the same switchgear and plastics you might find all across the Honda family.
It's like Honda is driven to blandness. Maybe the "old" Honda fans will find more interest in Honda's lesser Japanese competitor, Mazda. Mazda is doing now what Honda did 20 years ago. Mazda's all-new line up is edgy and cool. Mazda finally did the smart thing and went for niche market appeal. It's worked and Mazda's sales are up 20% with profit up over 50%. I'd like to see the old Honda return. There was excitement, solid engineering and innovation. Maybe if Honda could get past the importance of its new jet engine program or an ULEV lawnmower engine, it could go back to being Don Quixote tilting his javelin at a windmill. I think Honda loyalists everywhere would like that.
