The Downfall of Honda (In America)

[RacingManiac]

I actually think out and out handling of the new Pony cars is probably quite good, the issue is its hard to access to an average person. Big and heavy car with poor sight line is hard to place on the road, and thus its harder to judge the limit. On a track or autocross course where there aren't much to hit or avoid its not an issue, but on a quick piece of road its going to manifest itself....

[jcp123]

True. The Mustangs I drove a while back did feel rather heavy when tossing them into a corner.

[NSXType-R]

I actually think out and out handling of the new Pony cars is probably quite good, the issue is its hard to access to an average person. Big and heavy car with poor sight line is hard to place on the road, and thus its harder to judge the limit. On a track or autocross course where there aren't much to hit or avoid its not an issue, but on a quick piece of road its going to manifest itself....

I agree- I went to the NY Auto Show just this Saturday and I feel like American cars have poor visibility. The only car that I felt looked alright from the inside out was the Ford Taurus, and that has "captains chairs". The Chevy Volt and I believe Malibu I sat in, both were terrible- the dash was incredibly high and the hood I have no idea where it ended.

Same issue with the Ford Mustang. I sat in a 5.0 V8 and I could barely see over the dash.

To be fair however, I didn't know how to adjust the seats, so that may have been factor.

[Ferrer]

I agree- I went to the NY Auto Show just this Saturday and I feel like American cars have poor visibility. The only car that I felt looked alright from the inside out was the Ford Taurus, and that has "captains chairs". The Chevy Volt and I believe Malibu I sat in, both were terrible- the dash was incredibly high and the hood I have no idea where it ended.

Same issue with the Ford Mustang. I sat in a 5.0 V8 and I could barely see over the dash.

To be fair however, I didn't know how to adjust the seats, so that may have been factor.

This is something that also happens to many European cars, like the Citroën DS4, the Mercedes-Benz A-Class or the Range Rover Evoque. The view ahead is not so bad, but laterally and specially backwards they are almost impossible to see out of...

[roosterjuicer]

They change direction more easily, are easier to place on the road, fit better on narrow country lanes, it's not the same stopping several times 1800kg than topping 900kg and they usually are fitted with high performance summer tyres (which for us here in the south are "all-year" tyres).

You need to just read some reviews. The new pony cars are not one trick ponies (see what I did there?)

While I don't disagree about fitting on country roads, the "hot" hatches are nowhere near the same league as the new mustang or camaro in handling. A camaro ss runs the slalom at 68.2mph, a focus ST runs it at 65.8. While a hot hatch may be more fun to drive, almost all of them would be destroyed in a road race.

[RacingManiac]

You need to just read some reviews. The new pony cars are not one trick ponies (see what I did there?)

While I don't disagree about fitting on country roads, the "hot" hatches are nowhere near the same league as the new mustang or camaro in handling. A camaro ss runs the slalom at 68.2mph, a focus ST runs it at 65.8. While a hot hatch may be more fun to drive, almost all of them would be destroyed in a road race.

Slalom test can be skewed quite easily one way or another. Since there are no standard in slalom test procedure....

While I don't disagree with the premise that a new pony car, even a V6 one, can be quite fast around a track or even an autocross course, the speed which the hot hatches covers ground is not something to sneered at....I live in a region where pony cars are probably as popular as Miata at local autocrosses, so its a bit of a skewed population(I am in Metro Detroit...), but in general when the going gets tight smaller size car usually prevails. Granted, the fastest car last year in the series were between a C5 Corvette, and a 1st gen ACR Dodge Neon....

[jcp123]

Those ACRs were bad little cars...

Pony cars achieve handling through brute force. While their suspension setups are better than those of yore, it's mostly down to sheer grip when it comes to hustling them through corners, not a whole lot of grace, by and large, but there are exceptions.

Hot hatches are handicapped with their front wheel drive, but their light weight and mostly more advanced suspensions make up a lot of the difference. What they may or may not lack in sheer grip they usually make up for with better-engineered behavior in hard cornering. The best of the best even program a little bit of controllable drift into the rear end to counter any understeer.

[RacingManiac]

Not necessarily better or more advanced suspension, but just lighter and still plenty of tires...

Hot hatches are vastly compromised things, because most are based on their bean counting "everyman-car" econobox counter part, things are designed and made on a limited budget for maximum cost saving. Recently they start to have more sophisticated suspension(independent rear suspension, what!), but they are typically made to have suspension that takes up less space for cargo, front Mcstrut, and FWD. Sporting intent though from those came from good old fashion work since you can't splurge on fancy hardware(they still have to be relatively affordable), so decent ride and handling work goes into them to make it work. Their biggest advantage is still weight and size.

[jcp123]

I would have thought that the majority of hot hatches had an indie rear suspension setup? Pardon my ignorance...I don't keep up on these new cars like i used to...

[RacingManiac]

In US maybe....Focus MK1 was the pioneer in that respect, Golf MK5 basically copied the Focus setup. A lot of the VAG product in Skoda/SEAT shared the setup. Most of the French still uses torsion beam rear to good effect. Mini has IRS, but I really don't class Mini as the same style of "hot hatches" as it was more engineered as a sporty car that happened to front drive hatchback, then a hatchback made to be sporty...It also is significantly less useful as a hatch...

[jcp123]

Focus had a damn good setup too, IMHO...I had two of 'em. ZTS sedan and SVT 3-door. Unfortunate they didn't take the time to make the car as a whole as reliable as their suspension was good.

[Ferrer]

You need to just read some reviews. The new pony cars are not one trick ponies (see what I did there?)

While I don't disagree about fitting on country roads, the "hot" hatches are nowhere near the same league as the new mustang or camaro in handling. A camaro ss runs the slalom at 68.2mph, a focus ST runs it at 65.8. While a hot hatch may be more fun to drive, almost all of them would be destroyed in a road race.

Well played!

The thing is, a slalom doesn't even get close to a full mountain road. Not only mountain roads are much longer than slaloms, but they are also full of unexpected conditions, off-camber corners, decreasing/increasing radius corners, tight lanes, hills, blind corners and so on.

It's not also about outright performance only, but the confidence the car gives you to use that performance. The small, light and agile hot hatches give you more confidence to brake later and hit apexes harder than a big, cumbersome car does no matter how good it is.

In this aspect the newer muscle cars must feel a lot like the Jaguar XF 4.2 I drive from time to time. Yes, it does handle well and it is enjoyable in a tight mountain road, but it simply does not feel as natural as a tiny B-road blaster, it feels like outside of its element. So you end up braking earlier and going a little bit slower through the corners than you would in say a Mini Cooper S (which I also used to drive).

Not necessarily better or more advanced suspension, but just lighter and still plenty of tires...

Hot hatches are vastly compromised things, because most are based on their bean counting "everyman-car" econobox counter part, things are designed and made on a limited budget for maximum cost saving. Recently they start to have more sophisticated suspension(independent rear suspension, what!), but they are typically made to have suspension that takes up less space for cargo, front Mcstrut, and FWD. Sporting intent though from those came from good old fashion work since you can't splurge on fancy hardware(they still have to be relatively affordable), so decent ride and handling work goes into them to make it work. Their biggest advantage is still weight and size.

Indeed.

But there's a crucial difference. In the same way that making an US car fast in straight line is easy because big powerful engines are plentiful and readily available, it is also easy to make an economy European car a mountain road champion, because the base car already was designed to go well in the corners in the first place.

Even mainstream, entry level versions of EDM cars can be driven fast in the corners. It'll take a day to get to each corner, but when turning you don't need to slow down much or even at all! Forgive me for insisting, but even our entry level Hyundai i30 would surprise you, friends from the other side of the pond!

[jcp123]

Here's something posted at another site I visit:

Michael Accavitti Senior VP of American Honda Motor Company - Honda - April 10, 2013

There's been a great deal of positive attention to some organizational changes at Honda that took effect this month. These changes will strengthen and improve our efforts to bring innovative and affordable new Honda and Acura products to market. But if there's one thing that I've learned through my career in the auto industry, it's that sometimes it's as important for people to understand why a company has embarked on a challenging new direction, as it is to know what the company is doing.

Some have interpreted our strategy as a wholesale shift of our operations out of Southern California. This is not the case at all. This is an evolutionary step, that will efficiently group key executives under one roof to make high-level decision making close to the major operations in Ohio that are critical to new product introductions. But top executives remain in California as well. And overall, with more than 2,500 Honda associates on our Torrance campus we expect fewer than 50 jobs will transfer to Ohio.

In the face of today's hyper-competitive marketplace, Honda's operations here in our North America business region now have a greater responsibility within Honda's global organization. To fulfill this new and larger role, we have taken steps to centralize decision-making and streamline the new model process. In this way, we will advance our ability to quickly deliver high quality and affordable products to our customers in this region and around the globe.

One of the key goals of our organizational changes is to shorten the time from when we finalize a product design to when that all-new product reaches our customers. After all, what seems like a good idea today, might not meet customer expectations tomorrow, if it takes too long, or the cost is too high, to bring that idea to market. So, we must accelerate our ability to introduce new models at more affordable prices to increase our competitiveness.

This strategy led to the organizational changes which serve to centralize decision-making for our North American regional operations in Ohio. Why Ohio? After more than 30 years of building and developing products in America, it is already the center point of our engineering capabilities. We are leveraging our significant investments in Ohio where we have established two major auto plants, our North American purchasing operations, North American Engineering Center and our major R&D center.

At the same time, our presence in California will remain robust and vibrant. The headquarters of our sales and marketing operations, and a number of other key operations that support them, remain firmly rooted in Torrance, California. As one recent example, we just announced a new structure for our automobile advertising that will strengthen our marketing efforts with a Honda team in California at the hub of the strategy.

In fact, we have Honda operations all over North America that will remain in their current locations and focused more than ever on their same core responsibilities. This is especially true for our efforts to design, build and sell Honda and Acura products.

Our North American operations have been tasked with greater responsibilities within Honda's global business. We already have 14 major production operations in North America, building a wide range of Honda and Acura automobiles, automobile engines and transmissions, Honda all-terrain vehicles, and power equipment products such as lawn mowers, mini-tillers and general purpose engines, using domestic and globally sourced parts.

Now, based on investments in just the past two years of about $2.5 billion, our North American auto production network is beginning to take a lead role in launching key global models like the future all-new generation of the Honda Civic. Our plants here will prepare new models for production and share the production know-how with other Honda plants around the globe. This is a big deal -- because in the past, this lead role was generally done in Japan.

We also have 14 R&D facilities in America that design and develop the majority of the light truck products that we build here. These operations have taken on increased responsibility to create products that are just right for the needs of our customers in North America, and take even greater advantage of local parts sourcing and manufacturing. This includes leading development of both the next generation Honda Civic for North America, as well as the Acura NSX supercar. This is a major component of our strategy to increase the speed of development, the affordability of our products, and the competitiveness of the Honda and Acura brands.

We also will be ratcheting up automobile exports from North America to markets around the world. We expect to double last year's export total of almost 100-thousand units, so that in the coming years we will be a net exporter - meaning we will export more cars from North America than we import from Japan.

It's a bold plan that builds on the foundation we have established during the past three decades. To make all of this work, we took action to streamline our corporate structure, which will help develop a common process across all of our sales, production, R&D and purchasing operations in this region. And that is something that is not only increasing the competitiveness and stability of Honda in North America - it will improve the quality and affordability of our products for our customers. And that is the ultimate “why” for these latest steps in our history in North America.

[NSXType-R]

There is so much corporate talk in that statement!

If they're going to streamline their cars, they can start by streamlining the damn ZDX and Crosstour out of the lineup. Notice how he doesn't even mention what sort of cars he's going to build.

[Kitdy]

streamlining the damn ZDX and Crosstour out of the lineup.

Trololol.

No lies: I see more Ferraris than ZDXi.