[Hispaniola]

Things Honda could have done..

1. Base Variants like E/EX/S for Jazz along with CVT. Missed opportunity
2. Automatic Variants for WRV. Another Missed Opportunity.
4. A hot hatch version of WRV with 1.5(platform issue? I am sure 4th gen City and WRV has same platform)
3. 4th Gen City in lower variants or automatic in existing variants. Missed opportunity again.

Currently only Amaze has true base, mid and top variants.

Cannibalization should be least of their worries. Look how Nexon, Altroz, Punch are so much close to each other, with Nexon having more varients than stars in Galaxy.

Looks like someone is crunching wrong numbers at Honda Headquarters and suggested discontinuing these variants. These cars could have coexisted along with upcoming <4m SUV.

Capacity issues? Strategic Decision? Don't know what this is but Honda Showrooms these days looks exactly like Nissan Showroom in my city, empty!

And this is coming from someone like me who bought another Amaze, this time CVT, after my father had peaceful 10 Years with his 2013 DTech Amaze. We really liked Jazz but we anticipated today's news well in advance(of course rumors were there online ) and went ahead with Baleno.

Dear Honda Management(Product/Brand/Ops), pull up your socks.

[Akhileshmdp]

[Picked up a used 2015 VX CVT City 4G, 40K run about 2 months back. Think parts will become a problem? I plan on keeping this car for 5 years at least. Any parts I should invest in?]
In the same boat, picked a 2015 VX CVT City 4G, 33K run a couple of months back, surprised at how much we have in common, with the new City carrying over almost the same engine and transmission and 25 years of history behind, don't think parts will be a problem for next decade at least, would be interested to hear if others have a different opinion.

[kadanaJ]

Honda still has tremendous brand value and goodwill in India.

The current line-up is a huge disappointment. As other's have pointed out, it's not even a 3 car portfolio. They have 2 cars, the City and the Amaze.

Let's hope Honda India management wakes up and launches a slew of exciting products for the market.

A push into hybrid C-SUVs would certainly give them a USP.

If Honda India sleeps now, the brand reputation built painstakingly over the past 2 decades will be forgotten with time.

[@PetrolheadASH]

Honda has gotten its India strategy completely wrong. Their cars lack style and build quality. What is the point of having a cracker of an engine of you cant have the body to handle it or keep the passengers safe. The last good design to come out of Honda was the Civic and the arrow shot design city. Its been uninspiring and downhill since then.

They need to buck up.

[VRSriram]

There should have been NOTA option also. Honda is not committed to India and this clearly shows in their product portfolio. A good company should always have their product list updated which is not the case. They have lost their way by giving sub standard products with flimsy build and with out dated technology.

[Totoro11]

A lot has been said about the mechanical aspects of Honda cars & their marketing strategy. But how did things come to such a sorry state?

The Perfect Storm
1. No one is clear about the future of the industry and everyone is placing bets in hope of being right. Should a company go all-electric (Li-ion or Ni-Cd or Hydrogen? or maybe some other upcoming tech) or go for hybrids or sell as many ICE as they can while people are still buying? In my opinion, each of these options have a high probability of being the right choice, making it extremely difficult for OEMs to decide. In India, we have seen success with City & Toyota hybrids as well as full EVs like Nexon, Astor & Tigor. Where does Honda go in this situation?

2. They were too slow to read the market shift towards SUVs. So was Suzuki but they bounced back with Brezza & Grand Vitara.

3. It is not secret that the regulatory regime in indian automotive sector is changing too fast for anyone's comfort. Honda too has suffered from the successive emission and safety related changes. While some other OEMs have been quick to respond, it is natural that each company would move at a different pace based on their DNA. Which brings us to the fourth and perhaps the most important point:

4. Culture: having worked as a tech supplier to Honda, i have seen first hand the cultural transition. When they entered India, there was a lot of Japanese oversight and their ethos reflected in the cars for sale. Overtime, the power with Indian employees increased and unfortunately, that did not work out so well for Honda as it did for Maruti/Toyota/Hyundai. Case in point: Mobilio, BR-V, early Amaze (even Brio).
As the auto sector evolved, the dynamic and growth-hungry talent left for greener pastures while the comfort-focused middle management remained and got promoted by virtue of tenure. Territories and fiefdoms got created and bureaucracy increased. When people are too focused on protecting their turf, it is difficult for them to think of the greater good and company survival... and there is no one with a spine to tell them they are wrong. This is a classic case of peter principle as we have also seen in the middle management of Indian IT services firms.
By the time the Japanese management realized things were going downhill, Covid struck and things went further out of hand. India was too small part of their global market and they perhaps tried to douse fires elsewhere.

5. Real manufacturing: quite a lot of parts for so-called 'made in india' models were imported from South-east Asia and sent to local subcontractors for de-kitting & subassembly. I do not have the exact numbers but my guess is a lot of their costs went towards royalties and purchases from overseas Honda entities. In times of global uncertainty, the forex fluctuations, interest rates and logistics costs can play havoc with business models.

It feels sad to see a company with growth plans 5 years back(opening new manufacturing & distribution facilities at Tapukera) now scaling down their operations. Hope they are able to get their act together.

[AZT]

Originally Posted by sandeepmdas

Not only in India, globally also the web searches and online references about Honda is apparently diminishing...

If I can talk about Canada, Honda remains in massive demand and the CRV, Civic, and Accord all make it to the most stolen cars list. The CRV is twice as much as the 2nd next ranked Lexus.

[sandeepmdas]

Originally Posted by AZT

If I can talk about Canada, Honda remains in massive demand

Google Trends is a not a scientific study , although I would still assume that in these times dwindling search volume means eroding interest. Only time can tell.

[MBond007]

I was having a conversation with an FNG owner in Noida regarding availability of spare parts of Ford. He said Ford spare parts are readily available, but Honda spare parts are selling at a premium. He showed a link rod for a City which he bought at a premium of Rs 1000.

With Honda narrowing its portfolio, things are likely to go downhill.

[blackasta]

So I am driving around in a discontinued model from the start of this financial year - eh?

Pity, because my 2018 Jazz feels like a nice package - reliable, good handling, lots of space, good visibility. The AVN is buggy, and the omission of auto dimming mirror (which I have added myself), rear headrest & magic seats are unpardonable though. The engine feels good enough for office commute, and ok if you are not doing triple digit speeds on the highway, even with 5 aboard.

No immediate plans to sell this car as it is serving my current purpose quite nicely.

Let's see how the situation looks after 5 more years - till then, I'll continue to drive the Jazz.

[DeKay]

Good riddance! Hated all 3 of them -

I bought the 4th gen City sight unseen, because I wanted to experience Honda's legendary reliability, build quality and comfortable interior. Other than being comfortable, it left me thoroughly disappointed in every other aspect to an extent that I had to sell it within 2 years.

[TorqueIndia]

Good bye to all of them, hopes Honda is rejigging the assembly lines and will bring some strong products to regain it's lost glory.

In the used market all these 3 cars City , Jazz and WRV are still in strong demand. Was casually searching for WRVs ( Jazz + good GC) and was surprised by the very high resale figures that little guy is holding on. WRV was not the best seller too max about 4-5K pm, were at the 3rd or 4th in the segment sales rank in it's best times.

Eagerly looking for a fresh line up from HONDA, should come out of the CITY comfort zone.

[amitayu]

Been so close to buying the Jazz twice! On both occassions, I felt the company (or the dealers) were not keen about the product and gave it a step brotherly treatment.

On the second occassion, the second generation Amaze was a new launch and the SA was more keen to push me to the Amaze from Jazz.


Its a pity, as I still love the product/concept. It is one of the most comfortable hatch in terms of sitting and internal ambience.

[aniketi]

Sad but only Honda to blame here. They were on top in Indian automobile space at the start of the new century, that is early 2000. Buying Honda was everyone's dream that time, including me. Civic, CRV, Accord were all leading the market and it was ultimate luxury that time. Even City was considered to be rich peoples car. When Maruti and Hyundai tried so many things over years, Honda was sleeping. They failed in some cases but they kept trying with multiple cars, different designs in multiple segments, ultimately they got huge success and they are still leading the Indian market. Honda did not experiment much and they downgraded their quality to compete with Maruti and Hyundai. That was melting point IMHO. They failed big time in that and they are here today in current situation. Currently they have very little hopes in coming years and market is clearly slipping from them. They should learn few things from Tata and Mahindra, how they have evolved over last ten years.

[AutoDowntowner]

Being a WRV owner for more than 3 years, I feel very sad to read this news. Against my wish, I had to sell my WRV before moving out of India. I sold it to Spinny & it is still lying in at their yard, because buyers knew that Honda is going to kill its few products. and it turned out to be true today.
I still believe no other car is as comfortable as WRV in its category.
Recently Honda said they are bringing many new cars for India but on the other hand they killed their own 2 good products - WRV & Jazz. I still do not understand their strategy, nor the sales guys at showrooms understand it.
I hope to see the upcoming Honda products to be very competitive in performance & features. Good luck.