TheChamp
Honorary Master
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Question of the Day: Have you ever ordered a product online and received a fake knock-off?
Honda Brand
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Thanks.
pinball wizard
Honorary Master
FiestaST
Honorary Master
Here dawg
FiestaST
Honorary Master
Nooit bru!
Dan C
Honorary Master
Nooit bru!
:crylaugh:
Dan C
Honorary Master
Back to the OP question. Honda service / aftermarket is 100000x better than Renault.
JerryMungo
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Nee man, dis Ford Kugas wat brand.
Have seen this Civic in Rivonia. Actually wanted to take a pic the other dayNooit bru!
JerryMungo
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^^Surely nobody is that low on taste lol. The point of the Civic is the clean lines and recessed pipes... but noooooo!
FiestaST
Honorary Master
Indeed + the bollocks...lol
FiestaST
Honorary Master
Mind****:
JerryMungo
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ichocolate
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I don't get the comments regarding Honda being more expensive. Seems similarly priced to competitors to me.
Regardless - VTEC
Hyundai is more pricey from what i saw, i looked from last year through to this year.
i20 and any sedan with low mileage and young age, all priced at 170k
FiestaST
Honorary Master
How Honda lost its mojo - and the mission to get it back
The driver punched the air as his red and white McLaren Honda roared over the finish line. It was Suzuka, Japan, 1988, and Ayrton Senna had just become Formula One world champion for the first time. The McLaren racing team and its engine maker Honda were unstoppable that year, their drivers winning all but one of the 16 Grand Prix races.
Off the track Honda had been tasting success, too. In the 1970s, its engineers had raised the bar for fuel efficiency and cleaner emissions with the CVCC engine. In the 1980s, as its engines were propelling Senna to multiple victories, the Civic and Accord cars were redefining the American family sedan. In 1997, Honda became one of the first carmakers to unveil an all-electric battery car, the EV Plus, capable of meeting California's zero emission requirement.
Jump forward almost 30 years from that Senna moment and Honda is flailing. On the racetrack, the Honda McLaren partnership is in trouble: The team is without a single win this season, and McLaren is losing patience with its engine supplier and speaking of a parting of the ways.
On the road, the Honda fleet has been dogged by recalls. More than 11 million vehicles have been recalled in the United States since 2008 due to faulty airbags. In 2013 and 2014 there were five back-to-back recalls for the Fit and Vezel hybrid vehicles due to transmission defects. Honda has lost ground in electric cars to Tesla and others.
'We lost our mojo.'
Chief executive Takahiro Hachigo admitted: "We lost our way as an engineering company; we lost what made Honda, Honda."
Hachigo joined Honda as an engineer in 1982 and became CEO in June 2015. Now he wants to revive a culture that encouraged engineers to take risks and return to a corporate structure that protected innovators from bureaucrats focused on cost-cutting.
To help him achieve this, he says, he has tapped into the ideas of a small group of Honda engineers, managers and planners. This group is modeled on the freewheeling "skunk works" teams that drove aircraft development at Lockheed Martin, computer design at Apple and self-drive technology at Google.
In interviews, more than 20 current and former Honda executives and engineers at the company's facilities in Japan, China and the United States recounted the missteps that they say contributed to Honda's decline as an innovator. They also revealed new details of the company's efforts to rediscover its creative spark.
They said Honda had become trapped by Japan's "monozukuri" (literally, "making things") approach to manufacturing. This culture of incremental improvement and production line efficiency, called "kaizen", served the company well in the decades after World War Two, they said, but today's challenges – electrification, computerisation, self-driving cars – demand a more nimble and flexible approach.
Most importantly, they said, over the past two decades company executives in Tokyo were given too much control over research and development. In their view, this led to shareholder value being prioritized over innovation. There was a reluctance to draw on talent from outside Japan. In its quest to deliver for shareholders, Honda sought to maximise volume and profit and match the product range of its main Japanese rival, Toyota.
"The upshot was, as we obsessed about Toyota and beating it in the marketplace, we started to look like Toyota. We started to forget why we existed as a company to begin with," said Honda R&D president Yoshiyuki Matsumoto.
Tighter control
Honda's revenues have grown strongly since 2000 but its cars have slipped down quality rankings, from seventh in market research firm JD Power's initial quality study in 2000 to 20th in 2017.
Striving to satisfy shareholders meant controlling costs. Honda's chief executive from 2003 to 2009, Takeo Fukui, broke with the company tradition of giving technical managers discretion over how to spend the roughly five percent of revenue allocated to development.
When Takanobu Ito replaced Fukui as CEO in 2009, he further tightened control over the design phase, by moving several senior posts in the tech division from the research and development unit near Utsunomiya, to corporate headquarters in Tokyo.
Honda's popular Civic car was one of the casualties of these changes. With a reputation for outstanding engineering, reliability and affordability, the Civic was one of Honda's top selling cars.
The chief engineer for the redesign that began in 2007, Mitsuru Horikoshi, said: "Right from the get-go, the program was about making cost savings in real terms."
To that end the global automotive business unit, headed at the time by future CEO Ito, and the technical division decided that the new Civic would use many of the same components and systems as the previous model, including the front and rear suspension and the front subframe.
'It was just unheard of'
Horikoshi finished a preliminary design setting down the basic engineering points by February 2008 and a more detailed design by April, but when rising fuel and steel prices pushed up manufacturing costs by $1200 - $1400 (then R9000 - R10 500) per vehicle, Horikoshi's team refined their design to improve the car's fuel economy.
In early July 2008 they sought management approval for their plan at a meeting in Torrance, California, Honda's US sales headquarters. Global automotive head Ito said he would review the design overnight, Horikoshi recalled. The next morning, Ito came back and told the team to make the car smaller and cheaper to produce, and complete the redesign by the end of that month.
"With one blow of a cost chopping knife, Ito basically told us to take our design back to the preliminary stage," Horikoshi said. "It was unprecedented."
To meet Ito's specifications, Horikoshi used cheaper materials and made the car smaller, cutting its length by 45mm, its width by 25mm and reducing the wheelbase by 30mm. A former leader of Honda's R&D unit said the company "lapsed deeper into a bunker mentality, and that translated into our products. It was cut, cut, cut, and it cheapened our cars".
By the end of 2008, Horikoshi's team was wrapping up the Civic design. Half a year behind schedule, they were still $200 (R1500) short of the cost target per car.
"I already had my pants down to my ankles – nothing more to shed." Horikoshi said.
When the 2012 model year Civic went on sale in 2011, it was met with a barrage of criticism. Influential US magazine Consumer Reports dropped the car from its recommended list for the first time since it began rating vehicles in 1993. It criticised the new Civic for a poor quality interior and uneven ride.
R&D chief Matsumoto said the episode was a lesson that creativity should not be sacrificed on the altar of shareholder value. During previous assignments for Honda in Thailand and India, Matsumoto said he had looked at headquarters from afar and recognised a lack of creativity there.
"We have to be allowed to go wild at times," he said. "If you operate a technology center only from an efficiency perspective, you'll kill the place. Which is exactly what happened at Honda. We don't want headquarters people telling engineers what to do."
Honda went back to the drawing board. The redesigned model that replaced the 2012 Civic was named the 2016 North American Car of the Year by car journalists.
Scaling back research
At the same time as Honda bosses were tightening the budget for the 2012 Civic, they were also looking for savings in research and development.
Other car companies were investing heavily in green technology, an area where Honda had already established itself as a leader with the unveiling of its EV Plus battery car in 1997, one of the first electric vehicles from a major carmaker. But just as its competitors were investing more, Honda began holding back.
Fukui, who became CEO in 2003, felt Honda was engaged in too many areas of research. As a result, Honda scaled back work on plug-in battery electric vehicles and put its faith in the hydrogen-fueled car. By the time Honda turned back to plug-in cars in the late 2000s it had already lost several years to its competitors. Honda finally came up with a competitive plug-in car in 2013, 16 years after its original EV Plus. It is still playing catch up with the likes of Tesla.
Frustration
Erik Berkman, former head of Honda's technology unit in the United States - the company's biggest market - said Honda has overlooked the potential of its workforce outside Japan for too long, and that has harmed the company. Honda's management team, board of directors and operating officers were until recently all male and Japanese. The company named its first foreign (Japanese-Brazilian) and first female board members only three years ago.
Late in 2013 Berkman gave a speech in Motegi at a meeting of Honda engineers and researchers. His message was clear: It was time for Honda to tap the brainpower of all its engineers. Research staff in the United States, some of whom had worked at Honda for more than two decades, were being treated like students.
"We don't want to be 'indentured servants'," Berkman said. "My attitude is: 'This is my company too.' Increasing diversity within Honda, and specifically Honda R&D, is our path forward."
Berkman said later many capable engineers and researchers in the United States had left Honda over the years out of frustration at being disregarded.
"They felt the bosses in Japan were too controlling and unwilling to take on what we thought were reasonable risks," he said.
https://www.iol.co.za/motoring/indu...ojo---and-the-mission-to-get-it-back-11131491
The driver punched the air as his red and white McLaren Honda roared over the finish line. It was Suzuka, Japan, 1988, and Ayrton Senna had just become Formula One world champion for the first time. The McLaren racing team and its engine maker Honda were unstoppable that year, their drivers winning all but one of the 16 Grand Prix races.
Off the track Honda had been tasting success, too. In the 1970s, its engineers had raised the bar for fuel efficiency and cleaner emissions with the CVCC engine. In the 1980s, as its engines were propelling Senna to multiple victories, the Civic and Accord cars were redefining the American family sedan. In 1997, Honda became one of the first carmakers to unveil an all-electric battery car, the EV Plus, capable of meeting California's zero emission requirement.
Jump forward almost 30 years from that Senna moment and Honda is flailing. On the racetrack, the Honda McLaren partnership is in trouble: The team is without a single win this season, and McLaren is losing patience with its engine supplier and speaking of a parting of the ways.
On the road, the Honda fleet has been dogged by recalls. More than 11 million vehicles have been recalled in the United States since 2008 due to faulty airbags. In 2013 and 2014 there were five back-to-back recalls for the Fit and Vezel hybrid vehicles due to transmission defects. Honda has lost ground in electric cars to Tesla and others.
'We lost our mojo.'
Chief executive Takahiro Hachigo admitted: "We lost our way as an engineering company; we lost what made Honda, Honda."
Hachigo joined Honda as an engineer in 1982 and became CEO in June 2015. Now he wants to revive a culture that encouraged engineers to take risks and return to a corporate structure that protected innovators from bureaucrats focused on cost-cutting.
To help him achieve this, he says, he has tapped into the ideas of a small group of Honda engineers, managers and planners. This group is modeled on the freewheeling "skunk works" teams that drove aircraft development at Lockheed Martin, computer design at Apple and self-drive technology at Google.
In interviews, more than 20 current and former Honda executives and engineers at the company's facilities in Japan, China and the United States recounted the missteps that they say contributed to Honda's decline as an innovator. They also revealed new details of the company's efforts to rediscover its creative spark.
They said Honda had become trapped by Japan's "monozukuri" (literally, "making things") approach to manufacturing. This culture of incremental improvement and production line efficiency, called "kaizen", served the company well in the decades after World War Two, they said, but today's challenges – electrification, computerisation, self-driving cars – demand a more nimble and flexible approach.
Most importantly, they said, over the past two decades company executives in Tokyo were given too much control over research and development. In their view, this led to shareholder value being prioritized over innovation. There was a reluctance to draw on talent from outside Japan. In its quest to deliver for shareholders, Honda sought to maximise volume and profit and match the product range of its main Japanese rival, Toyota.
"The upshot was, as we obsessed about Toyota and beating it in the marketplace, we started to look like Toyota. We started to forget why we existed as a company to begin with," said Honda R&D president Yoshiyuki Matsumoto.
Tighter control
Honda's revenues have grown strongly since 2000 but its cars have slipped down quality rankings, from seventh in market research firm JD Power's initial quality study in 2000 to 20th in 2017.
Striving to satisfy shareholders meant controlling costs. Honda's chief executive from 2003 to 2009, Takeo Fukui, broke with the company tradition of giving technical managers discretion over how to spend the roughly five percent of revenue allocated to development.
When Takanobu Ito replaced Fukui as CEO in 2009, he further tightened control over the design phase, by moving several senior posts in the tech division from the research and development unit near Utsunomiya, to corporate headquarters in Tokyo.
Honda's popular Civic car was one of the casualties of these changes. With a reputation for outstanding engineering, reliability and affordability, the Civic was one of Honda's top selling cars.
The chief engineer for the redesign that began in 2007, Mitsuru Horikoshi, said: "Right from the get-go, the program was about making cost savings in real terms."
To that end the global automotive business unit, headed at the time by future CEO Ito, and the technical division decided that the new Civic would use many of the same components and systems as the previous model, including the front and rear suspension and the front subframe.
'It was just unheard of'
Horikoshi finished a preliminary design setting down the basic engineering points by February 2008 and a more detailed design by April, but when rising fuel and steel prices pushed up manufacturing costs by $1200 - $1400 (then R9000 - R10 500) per vehicle, Horikoshi's team refined their design to improve the car's fuel economy.
In early July 2008 they sought management approval for their plan at a meeting in Torrance, California, Honda's US sales headquarters. Global automotive head Ito said he would review the design overnight, Horikoshi recalled. The next morning, Ito came back and told the team to make the car smaller and cheaper to produce, and complete the redesign by the end of that month.
"With one blow of a cost chopping knife, Ito basically told us to take our design back to the preliminary stage," Horikoshi said. "It was unprecedented."
To meet Ito's specifications, Horikoshi used cheaper materials and made the car smaller, cutting its length by 45mm, its width by 25mm and reducing the wheelbase by 30mm. A former leader of Honda's R&D unit said the company "lapsed deeper into a bunker mentality, and that translated into our products. It was cut, cut, cut, and it cheapened our cars".
By the end of 2008, Horikoshi's team was wrapping up the Civic design. Half a year behind schedule, they were still $200 (R1500) short of the cost target per car.
"I already had my pants down to my ankles – nothing more to shed." Horikoshi said.
When the 2012 model year Civic went on sale in 2011, it was met with a barrage of criticism. Influential US magazine Consumer Reports dropped the car from its recommended list for the first time since it began rating vehicles in 1993. It criticised the new Civic for a poor quality interior and uneven ride.
R&D chief Matsumoto said the episode was a lesson that creativity should not be sacrificed on the altar of shareholder value. During previous assignments for Honda in Thailand and India, Matsumoto said he had looked at headquarters from afar and recognised a lack of creativity there.
"We have to be allowed to go wild at times," he said. "If you operate a technology center only from an efficiency perspective, you'll kill the place. Which is exactly what happened at Honda. We don't want headquarters people telling engineers what to do."
Honda went back to the drawing board. The redesigned model that replaced the 2012 Civic was named the 2016 North American Car of the Year by car journalists.
Scaling back research
At the same time as Honda bosses were tightening the budget for the 2012 Civic, they were also looking for savings in research and development.
Other car companies were investing heavily in green technology, an area where Honda had already established itself as a leader with the unveiling of its EV Plus battery car in 1997, one of the first electric vehicles from a major carmaker. But just as its competitors were investing more, Honda began holding back.
Fukui, who became CEO in 2003, felt Honda was engaged in too many areas of research. As a result, Honda scaled back work on plug-in battery electric vehicles and put its faith in the hydrogen-fueled car. By the time Honda turned back to plug-in cars in the late 2000s it had already lost several years to its competitors. Honda finally came up with a competitive plug-in car in 2013, 16 years after its original EV Plus. It is still playing catch up with the likes of Tesla.
Frustration
Erik Berkman, former head of Honda's technology unit in the United States - the company's biggest market - said Honda has overlooked the potential of its workforce outside Japan for too long, and that has harmed the company. Honda's management team, board of directors and operating officers were until recently all male and Japanese. The company named its first foreign (Japanese-Brazilian) and first female board members only three years ago.
Late in 2013 Berkman gave a speech in Motegi at a meeting of Honda engineers and researchers. His message was clear: It was time for Honda to tap the brainpower of all its engineers. Research staff in the United States, some of whom had worked at Honda for more than two decades, were being treated like students.
"We don't want to be 'indentured servants'," Berkman said. "My attitude is: 'This is my company too.' Increasing diversity within Honda, and specifically Honda R&D, is our path forward."
Berkman said later many capable engineers and researchers in the United States had left Honda over the years out of frustration at being disregarded.
"They felt the bosses in Japan were too controlling and unwilling to take on what we thought were reasonable risks," he said.
https://www.iol.co.za/motoring/indu...ojo---and-the-mission-to-get-it-back-11131491
FiestaST
Honorary Master
What has Happened to Honda in SA?
Demand for Honda’s cars is booming around the globe, but those same products are not selling well in South Africa. Why?
South African is not an island. And to understand why certain things are happening locally, it’s worth having global context.
With Honda, that context defies all logic. This is a company that was built by a single, brilliantly charismatic, Japanese man, instead of a corporation or family business. Soichiro Honda was an engineer’s engineer and innovator who remained deeply involved with the development and production of cars that bore his name. He died in 1989.
Honda isn’t soulless. Its motorsport record shames those of most European brands and the variety of applications it produces products for is staggering. From motorcycles engines to those powering boats, generator sets for construction sites and even its own aeroplane. The Honda HA-420 compact executive jet. When was the last time you saw a German car brand build its own range of aeroplanes?
Honda has expanded to all forms of transport, such as boats, bikes and even planes like this one.
Despite all of this Honda appears to have lost its way in the local market. Sales are down and, whereas in the late 1990s Hondas were regarded favourably comparable to German front-wheel drive rivals (especially Volkswagen), in 2018 they're just... well, there. There’s a Civic Type R that heroically keeps the flame of everything that is admirable about Honda alive, but the brand's local market share is eroding.
An isolated issue?
If Honda was struggling in all global markets, South Africa would simply be following a momentum trend. But it isn't. When 2017’s global vehicle sales were tabulated and accounted for, Honda had 3 cars in the top-10 sellers. That's hardly the achievement of a company in bother, is it?
The 3 vehicles in question were the CR-V, HR-V and Civic, all of which are available locally and, as such, their popularity is quite useful to help analyse why Honda’s gone awry in South Africa. Congratulations must be given for success achieved and Civic sold 800 350 units to finish 5th, CR-V moved 749 151 SUVs to customers to conquer 7th place and 689 798 people became HR-V owners, placing it 9th.
Honda's best selling car globally is this Civic. In January 2018 it sold just 24 units in SA.
Those are stellar global sales statistics and what makes them particularly thought-provoking is the identities of the other cars which placed around those Hondas in the Top 10: Toyota’s Corolla and RAV4; Nissan’s X-Trail; Volkswagen’s Tiguan. Those vehicles are very familiar to South Africans, so if they sell well enough here, why can't Honda replicate its international success locally?
Percentage differences count for a lot
Trend analysts keep telling us the sedan is under threat globally, especially the affordable Japanese 4-door cars (sedans). However, global sales statistics indicate they are still holding their own, although the presence of similarly-sized SUVs among them on the Top 10 chart cannot be ignored.
Japanese sedans are mostly moving into the realm of company-car duty, used for Uber transport and many serve as government-pool vehicles. In the local context, the Toyota Corolla’s average price advantage over comparable Civic derivatives in South Africa is critical/explains the huge discrepancy in sales. On a Corolla-versus-Civic comparison it might not sound like much (6%), but convert that percentage to pricing and it’s a R22 900 difference. If you are a fleet buyer, that’s a lot. If you are a private buyer, that’s a lavish family vacation.
The classic Ballade nameplate has been relegated to an Uber shuttle.
Honda’s SUVs are a different matter to its Civics. Nearly all SUV buyers are private individuals and insights in this segment give a mcuh clearer understanding of what’s really happening with Honda in South Africa. Globally, Nissan’s X-Trail is the most popular SUV at 814 495 units, followed by RAV4 at 770 262, CR-V with 749 151 and Tiguan at 695 383. If you compare global demand with South African sales, it’s a starkly different scenario.
The perils of pricing
Toyota’s RAV4 silently crushes the entire South African compact SUV market. It sold 871 units in January. X-Trail managed 353. Tiguan 438. And Honda? Only 75 CR-Vs. That's staggering... If the CR-V is within 2.8% of RAV’s sales globally, how can Honda's family car be 91.4% behind Toyota's in the local market? The only plausible explanation is a huge South African pricing discrepancy between the two.
The Honda CR-V should be a top seller in SA, but it appears to be overpriced compared with rivals such as the Rav4 and Kia Sportage.
It’s always slightly disingenuous to use a foreign market for pricing comparison but Australia is a comparable environment to South Africa, with similar logistical isolation and vehicle specification. Both markets are right-hand drive and Honda lacks local manufacturing in either, being an importer in Oz and South Africa. Run the numbers for both the most expensive and affordable RAV4s and CR-Vs you can order in each country and the results are startling.
In Australia, the difference in price between an entry-level RAV4 and CR-V is a mere 0.3%, with the Honda being more affordable. Want an all-wheel-drive one absolutely loaded with specification? The Honda is cheaper again, by 0.9%. In South Africa, it’s a very different state of affairs. The most basic RAV4 is 11.8% cheaper than its CR-V rival. If you compare top-end versions of both, that difference expands to 12.3%.
To justify such a premium over any rival, a brand must offer something extraordinary and in the compact SUV segment, where most cars have similar features/functions and their engines are closely benchmarked in terms of performance and consumption, Honda’s SUV pricing is simply too expensive in South Africa. It’s a sad reality – one that is reflected in the sales decline of Honda locally. All the pent-up brand cachet and the positive reputation for product durability (much of which is passed on via word of mouth), won’t shield your business from pricing imbalances.
The Honda Civic Type R is all that's left for Honda performance fans to enjoy.
There’s an argument to be made in mitigation of Honda’s vulnerability as an importer, while Toyota benefits from the export credits it receives from the department of trade and industry by virtue of being a local manufacturer. This is inarguably true, but how does an importer like Kia manage to keep its pricing in a closer margin of competition with RAV4? The cheapest Kia Sportage is 0.05% more affordable than the RAV4. The dearest Sportage available is 7% more expensive than RAV4’s comparable offering, a notable difference, but in turn, it is still R26 905 cheaper than Honda’s flagship CR-V.
No longer the Japanese alternative
Meanwhile, Honda’s global status as a benchmark Japanese motor manufacturer remains unaffected. Its vehicles are in demand in a variety of markets and compete well with their respective rivals. There’s no other way to explain why Honda has a trio of products in the global Top 10 best-selling index.
What is telling, is how the local presence has retreated. Of all the Japanese car brands trading in South Africa, only Mitsubishi and Subaru have a smaller market share. Mazda, who don’t have a similar range of affordable Brios and Ballades to boost volume, is doing double Honda’s numbers. Twenty years ago, you’d never consider a Mazda over Honda. Today, many people are.
The imbalance between Honda’s local operations and those in the rest of the world is almost unbelievable. Whereas Honda was once the vanguard Japanese brand that challenged German superiority, it’s now nearly forgotten in South Africa. There was a time when Hondas were sold out of Mercedes-Benz’s dealer networks and we even saw local AMG-badged and upgraded Honda Ballades. Indeed, Honda has a storied history in the local market; it deserves to fare better. Hopefully something can be done before there is a ceremonial missing man formation flight by a group of HA-420s over South African skies...
https://www.cars.co.za/motoring_news/what-has-happened-to-honda-in-sa/44673/
Demand for Honda’s cars is booming around the globe, but those same products are not selling well in South Africa. Why?
South African is not an island. And to understand why certain things are happening locally, it’s worth having global context.
With Honda, that context defies all logic. This is a company that was built by a single, brilliantly charismatic, Japanese man, instead of a corporation or family business. Soichiro Honda was an engineer’s engineer and innovator who remained deeply involved with the development and production of cars that bore his name. He died in 1989.
Honda isn’t soulless. Its motorsport record shames those of most European brands and the variety of applications it produces products for is staggering. From motorcycles engines to those powering boats, generator sets for construction sites and even its own aeroplane. The Honda HA-420 compact executive jet. When was the last time you saw a German car brand build its own range of aeroplanes?
Honda has expanded to all forms of transport, such as boats, bikes and even planes like this one.
Despite all of this Honda appears to have lost its way in the local market. Sales are down and, whereas in the late 1990s Hondas were regarded favourably comparable to German front-wheel drive rivals (especially Volkswagen), in 2018 they're just... well, there. There’s a Civic Type R that heroically keeps the flame of everything that is admirable about Honda alive, but the brand's local market share is eroding.
An isolated issue?
If Honda was struggling in all global markets, South Africa would simply be following a momentum trend. But it isn't. When 2017’s global vehicle sales were tabulated and accounted for, Honda had 3 cars in the top-10 sellers. That's hardly the achievement of a company in bother, is it?
The 3 vehicles in question were the CR-V, HR-V and Civic, all of which are available locally and, as such, their popularity is quite useful to help analyse why Honda’s gone awry in South Africa. Congratulations must be given for success achieved and Civic sold 800 350 units to finish 5th, CR-V moved 749 151 SUVs to customers to conquer 7th place and 689 798 people became HR-V owners, placing it 9th.
Honda's best selling car globally is this Civic. In January 2018 it sold just 24 units in SA.
Those are stellar global sales statistics and what makes them particularly thought-provoking is the identities of the other cars which placed around those Hondas in the Top 10: Toyota’s Corolla and RAV4; Nissan’s X-Trail; Volkswagen’s Tiguan. Those vehicles are very familiar to South Africans, so if they sell well enough here, why can't Honda replicate its international success locally?
Percentage differences count for a lot
Trend analysts keep telling us the sedan is under threat globally, especially the affordable Japanese 4-door cars (sedans). However, global sales statistics indicate they are still holding their own, although the presence of similarly-sized SUVs among them on the Top 10 chart cannot be ignored.
Japanese sedans are mostly moving into the realm of company-car duty, used for Uber transport and many serve as government-pool vehicles. In the local context, the Toyota Corolla’s average price advantage over comparable Civic derivatives in South Africa is critical/explains the huge discrepancy in sales. On a Corolla-versus-Civic comparison it might not sound like much (6%), but convert that percentage to pricing and it’s a R22 900 difference. If you are a fleet buyer, that’s a lot. If you are a private buyer, that’s a lavish family vacation.
The classic Ballade nameplate has been relegated to an Uber shuttle.
Honda’s SUVs are a different matter to its Civics. Nearly all SUV buyers are private individuals and insights in this segment give a mcuh clearer understanding of what’s really happening with Honda in South Africa. Globally, Nissan’s X-Trail is the most popular SUV at 814 495 units, followed by RAV4 at 770 262, CR-V with 749 151 and Tiguan at 695 383. If you compare global demand with South African sales, it’s a starkly different scenario.
The perils of pricing
Toyota’s RAV4 silently crushes the entire South African compact SUV market. It sold 871 units in January. X-Trail managed 353. Tiguan 438. And Honda? Only 75 CR-Vs. That's staggering... If the CR-V is within 2.8% of RAV’s sales globally, how can Honda's family car be 91.4% behind Toyota's in the local market? The only plausible explanation is a huge South African pricing discrepancy between the two.
The Honda CR-V should be a top seller in SA, but it appears to be overpriced compared with rivals such as the Rav4 and Kia Sportage.
It’s always slightly disingenuous to use a foreign market for pricing comparison but Australia is a comparable environment to South Africa, with similar logistical isolation and vehicle specification. Both markets are right-hand drive and Honda lacks local manufacturing in either, being an importer in Oz and South Africa. Run the numbers for both the most expensive and affordable RAV4s and CR-Vs you can order in each country and the results are startling.
In Australia, the difference in price between an entry-level RAV4 and CR-V is a mere 0.3%, with the Honda being more affordable. Want an all-wheel-drive one absolutely loaded with specification? The Honda is cheaper again, by 0.9%. In South Africa, it’s a very different state of affairs. The most basic RAV4 is 11.8% cheaper than its CR-V rival. If you compare top-end versions of both, that difference expands to 12.3%.
To justify such a premium over any rival, a brand must offer something extraordinary and in the compact SUV segment, where most cars have similar features/functions and their engines are closely benchmarked in terms of performance and consumption, Honda’s SUV pricing is simply too expensive in South Africa. It’s a sad reality – one that is reflected in the sales decline of Honda locally. All the pent-up brand cachet and the positive reputation for product durability (much of which is passed on via word of mouth), won’t shield your business from pricing imbalances.
The Honda Civic Type R is all that's left for Honda performance fans to enjoy.
There’s an argument to be made in mitigation of Honda’s vulnerability as an importer, while Toyota benefits from the export credits it receives from the department of trade and industry by virtue of being a local manufacturer. This is inarguably true, but how does an importer like Kia manage to keep its pricing in a closer margin of competition with RAV4? The cheapest Kia Sportage is 0.05% more affordable than the RAV4. The dearest Sportage available is 7% more expensive than RAV4’s comparable offering, a notable difference, but in turn, it is still R26 905 cheaper than Honda’s flagship CR-V.
No longer the Japanese alternative
Meanwhile, Honda’s global status as a benchmark Japanese motor manufacturer remains unaffected. Its vehicles are in demand in a variety of markets and compete well with their respective rivals. There’s no other way to explain why Honda has a trio of products in the global Top 10 best-selling index.
What is telling, is how the local presence has retreated. Of all the Japanese car brands trading in South Africa, only Mitsubishi and Subaru have a smaller market share. Mazda, who don’t have a similar range of affordable Brios and Ballades to boost volume, is doing double Honda’s numbers. Twenty years ago, you’d never consider a Mazda over Honda. Today, many people are.
The imbalance between Honda’s local operations and those in the rest of the world is almost unbelievable. Whereas Honda was once the vanguard Japanese brand that challenged German superiority, it’s now nearly forgotten in South Africa. There was a time when Hondas were sold out of Mercedes-Benz’s dealer networks and we even saw local AMG-badged and upgraded Honda Ballades. Indeed, Honda has a storied history in the local market; it deserves to fare better. Hopefully something can be done before there is a ceremonial missing man formation flight by a group of HA-420s over South African skies...
https://www.cars.co.za/motoring_news/what-has-happened-to-honda-in-sa/44673/
handyman007
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I love Honda's, but yeah, too expensive at the moment. Would love a CR-V, but the X-Trail just seems a much better deal.
SykomantiS
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Pricing. Honda is becoming stupid expensive. Not only the sale of the vehicle, but also parts. My last service, the dealership informed me I would have to replace the fan belt and one pulley on my Civic- a 2010 model diesel- they're asking R8 000 for that one pulley and belt...
