Honda Motor Company comes full circle today with the announcement that the automaker's upmarket brand, Acura, will be sold in the company's native Japan come 2008. Acura was originally started in the U.S. as an end-around to the perception that Honda (and Japanese car companies in general) couldn't command luxury dollars or market share.
Now, with Japan finally finding its way out of economic recession (as evidenced by a 57-percent uptick in luxury automobile sales last year), Honda is following Lexus back home in 2008. Toyota’s upscale division has been selling in Japan since August, and is roughly on target to meet its 20,000 unit goal by the end of the calendar year.
In related news, Honda will aggregate its 2,400 dealers to cut costs. Where once domestic sales had been subdivided into three distinct channels: ‘Clio’ (mid-size and larger cars like the Accord, Legend, etc.); ‘Verno’, (SUVs), and ‘Primo’ (smaller vehicles like the Civic and Fit), in recent times the manufacturer has been cross-selling more and more models. Today, almost half of all lines are sold across all three channels, and over the next few years the divisions will fade away. This consolidation effort will be buttressed by 100 Acura dealers added to the mix, bringing the total network to 2,500 outlets.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
G @ Dec 19th 2005 12:27AM
This a good first step, hopefully they will expand the brand further, I'm surprised they hadn't done this earlier.
GORT @ Dec 19th 2005 12:27AM
Was in Japan last month and saw few Hondas that were larger than subcompacts--most popular Honda seems to be the FIT and there are plenty of much smaller Honda econoboxes, too.
There were few Accords--the Japanese Accord is the European Accord which is also the Acura TSX in the U.S. I saw even fewer American-style Accords which are branded INSPIRE in Japan. What's sold as the Acura RL in the U.S. is called the Honda Legend in Japan. The point is that upscale Honda-branded cars are fairly rare.
So, Honda probably has a tiny car image there and a separate, prestige brand makes sense if Honda chooses to compete with Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi which dominate the market for larger cars in Japan.