Find out 27 Mar

 

I wouldnt be surprised if Honda doesnt close dealers in many other countries too. It hasnt done much since 2000 , and their market share has since plummeted. Overtaken by many other forward thinking companies offering more advanced products at better prices/re-sale. Their motorcycle arm will soon follow. What a shameful fall from grace . They were really good once , but that was in the 80,s and 90,s.

I can remember going shopping for a new car, with Honda as one of the prime candidates. Staff at the dealership acted as if they were doing me a huge favor when I wanted a test drive. Finished up buying a Nissan Pulsar.

3 hours ago, canthai55 said:

Find out 27 Mar

Absolute rubbish all car manufacturers are in the same boat.

3 hours ago, Kwasaki said:

Absolute rubbish all car manufacturers are in the same boat.

New car buying has slowed down , and will get worse , for everyone , but those companies who have traded on their old reputation , and kept their head buried in the sand , are now going to suffer most . Or close down. Smaller dealer network and re-sale values on the floor. Honda has been behind for years in technical , quality and customer "service" , with both cars and bikes . They lost a fortune trying to get back into F1 with a unreliable , underpowered engine. At a time when buyers were deserting them and spending elsewhere , on better products. 

10 hours ago, ktm jeff said:

New car buying has slowed down , and will get worse , for everyone , but those companies who have traded on their old reputation , and kept their head buried in the sand , are now going to suffer most . Or close down. Smaller dealer network and re-sale values on the floor. Honda has been behind for years in technical , quality and customer "service" , with both cars and bikes . They lost a fortune trying to get back into F1 with a unreliable , underpowered engine. At a time when buyers were deserting them and spending elsewhere , on better products. 

As usual there's more to it that, F1 very competitive and so is MotoGP.

 

The blame does fundamentally lay at Honda’s door - but McLaren are not an innocent party.

Some background…

When McLaren lost their ‘works status’ of Mercedes Benz in 2010 - the new engine regs were agreed and Mercedes carved out a VERY competitive advantage. Ron Dennis ousted Martin Whitmarsh and looked to find a works (i.e. manufacturer supported) engine deal. Declaring that “no team can win a championship without a works engine” Ron went off to find a works deal and the $100M hole in the budget that Mercedes were now directing towards their own works team.

So Ron Dennis managed to convince Honda, who were out of the financial hole in that caused them to withdraw abruptly at the end of the 2008 season (and led to the creation of Brawn GP!).

Honda wanted to win again and believed it was possible. Ron Dennis was greedy for a competitive advantage (he was trying to find money to buy out the other 75% shareholders of the team) so he convinced them to come back in 2014 - a year earlier than they wanted to.

Combine that with the fact that Formula 1 had moved on from the Honda glory days of the late 80s and early 90s where sheer numbers of personnel and resources guaranteed success, now they were up against Daimler spending north of $500M per year and Renault Nissan also underwriting a similar amount (eventually! - that is why they are more competitive this year).

In the 2000s Honda were not competitive and because the chassis team blamed the engine and the engine team blamed the chassis and the chassis was developed in Brackley in the UK, Honda assumed that they never won anything because of the chassis and their engine programme was competitive. This was most definitely wrong.

So they re-entered F1 with one of the best teams with a ‘size zero’ concept, one of the top three drivers in Alonso and a world champion in the other car (Jenson Button) the pressure could not have been greater.

A contemporary F1 engine is frankly one of the most incredible pieces of engineering ever produced by mankind. I realise that that is a dramatic statement, but these engines in the space of a few years have increased the thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine from a really top engine having 35% efficiency to 50%. A 30% increase in only a few years and it took mankind 100 years to achieve the last 30% increase.

The targets set internally by the Honda team were way off what was required and because of their mentality they suffered, in the same way that Toyota did in F1, by not looking outside the company and recruiting specialists that have accurate knowledge of what was required, the project was doomed to disaster. The size zero concept was a failure and proved unreliable and difficult to make reliable. So back to the drawing board.

Now of course they were 3 years behind the rest, as they had wasted a year with the size zero concept, championed in part by Ron Dennis. They actually caught up quite a bit last year, slightly hampered by the ‘Engine Development Tokens’ rules. The restrictions on development were abandoned for 2017 and Honda tried to make a massive jump and ‘catch up’.

Unfortunately, nothing is for free and they had a single cylinder proof of concept producing some great numbers, when it was translated into a V6 it suffered horrendous balance and vibration problems. This has led to components literally shaking themselves apart on the car and the main reason for the poor reliability McLaren have shown in 2017 so far.

I actually believe they will become a lot better as the year goes on and the proposed switch to Mercedes engines as a customer may be a bit foolish. We will wait and see the next episode of this ‘soap opera for blokes’.

18 hours ago, Lacessit said:

Finished up buying a Nissan Pulsar.

Your loss.

20 hours ago, Lacessit said:

I can remember going shopping for a new car, with Honda as one of the prime candidates. Staff at the dealership acted as if they were doing me a huge favor when I wanted a test drive. Finished up buying a Nissan Pulsar.

You did........?.....????

2 hours ago, Just Weird said:

Your loss.

Plus one. I've heard from a Nissan mechanic that the engines seem to be pretty okay, but the chassis are not. 

 

    And looking at some, it seems to be true. 

The 1.5 turbo is a good engine looking after the chassis is not rocket science.

21 hours ago, Lacessit said:

I can remember going shopping for a new car, with Honda as one of the prime candidates. Staff at the dealership acted as if they were doing me a huge favor when I wanted a test drive. Finished up buying a Nissan Pulsar.

I ignore all sales people................????

Thanks Kwasaki , ive learnt a bit more. Everyday can be a school day. I do hope Honda "comes back" to their glory days , but they always  seem to be playing catch-up. 

57 minutes ago, ktm jeff said:

Thanks Kwasaki , ive learnt a bit more. Everyday can be a school day. I do hope Honda "comes back" to their glory days , but they always  seem to be playing catch-up. 

My take is it's just not Honda taking a hit, I don't think there will be anymore glory days sadly enough for any average car makers.

Big changes in attitude and climate change, regulations etc etc, with battery vehicles in the limelight, Honda is big and powerful enough to choose whatever they choose to do is the way I see it.