What Honda Needs to Do To Keep A Strong Position in the US Market

flobert wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Most people who buy station wagons do not want "performance",they want to haul their kids around. Honda used to make a station wagon Accord,and sales were not good enough to keep making them.Same for Toyota.

"TWW" wrote in news:5sDvf.42291$Ou3.39444@dukeread09:

RSX is ugly,it looks like an over-inflated Integra,jacked up six inches. Its front end is garish.

Most of "Detroit"s products are overweight and underpowered,and low-tech to boot.And I would not trust their quality or reliability.

Honda needs to bring back the Prelude.

hey, suspension is not the /only/ decision maker for the guy in the street. that's why the above comment is relative to "the tuner market", where it /is/ a factor.

Not sure if its as big as the old Volvo, but anyway I am looking for Japanese reliability.

We agree on that -- but it would probably not look like a Prelude if they did.

And wait until the Chinese catch up.......

Remember when Hyundai first entered the US market with the Excel? IIRC, its biggest selling point, which got a lot of publicity, was a much lower price for a brand-new car compared to what any other manufacturer was offering, and they sold quite a few cars to people who'd otherwise been considering used cars. I was in the market for a low-priced car at the time, and I have to admit that Hyundai briefly got my attention, but I ultimately opted for a used 1st-gen Prelude instead.

Dave

A guy where I work bought one back then. He was well paid but cheap. He had a loan on it and he said that he started getting calls from the bank every month asking if he was going to make his loan payment. Apparently, Hyundai buyers of that era turned out to be high credit risks.

He drove the car for a long, long time (like I said, he was cheap) and claimed it was very reliable. It did look a little like Swiss cheese by the time he dumped it.

I agree with you, Hyundai is the competitor to watch right now.

It seems to me that the secondary Japanese brands, which in the US market means everyone except Toyota and Honda, are in for an especially hard bruising as Toyota, Honda and Hyundai battle it out.

Fifty years ago the same thing happened when GM and Ford really went to battle. All of the other US makers took it in the shorts and only Chrysler sort of surived that battle.

John

Yes, and many people - and the marketplace in general - still equate Hyundai with the Excel. A poor first product offering is hard to overcome. But, their new products are light years aways from that product, just as today's Civic is light years in difference from the original Civic CVCC.

Yes, and many people - and the marketplace in general - still equate Hyundai with the Excel. A poor first product offering is hard to overcome. But, their new products are light years aways from that product, just as today's Civic is light years in difference from the original Civic CVCC.

Actually, Hyundai's first North American small car was the Pony. The Excel was the Pony's successor.

Oh, they're still made, just not sold in the Us. Big Difference

I have had volvos for years, mainly european 340s and 360s.

The V70s are not quite as big as the old 240 estate certainly not the current model, the older one (96-01 iirc) is bigger, but its basically the 760 refined a bit more.

They're reliable if kept maintained (except for some of the XCs) British and european polie ofrces use the V70 as their prefered pursuit car, and those do heavy duty on constant swapped shifts - 130k miles a year is average for them, often in high pursuit (delimited, a t5 will do somewhere in the region of 160mph) only place something else is prefered is for inner-city pursuits, where the imprezta (often worked on by prodrive) rules, which are tweaked to make traffic humps at 70 doable