The days of each model having it's own identity are long gone. All the cars are the same homogenized styling across the brands.

 

Yup, the CUV effect.

And it’s hilarious when they complain. Toyota makes the GRC, and I’ve read countless people whining it’s not bigger. For child hauling, baby seats, more storage room. I said to myself WTF? Why would you even consider a rally inspired car? WRC uses small hatchbacks. The GRC is actually the more family friendly, or useable GR product. The GRY is much smaller, as is the GR86 and GR Supra.

And speaking of the Supra. What a car for the price, yet people complain it’s a BMW motor, etc. Well geniuses, if it was not a partnership, much like the Twins, it wouldn’t got d f’in exist! Man I had my $ ready for GRY and was foaming at the mouth and was quite displeased that we didn’t get it. But we got another version, I said ok good enough, and they got my money and it’s in the garage. So many just find anything they can to whine and complain so the mfr’s say f it, here is vanilla, and more vanilla. Hey we have small, medium, and large CUV’s for you. Couple cookie cutter sedans. You don’t like it, buy an EV nooch. Europe meanwhile, has always had these really cool vehicles we don’t get. So it’s the American buyer at fault at the core. All anyone is doing in America these days is trying to be like everyone else. Straight herd mentality. Thank the phone and social media. Those of us who go our own way are few and far between.

And the phone and social media is more important than God to these people. More important than a job or career. And certainly more important than enthusiast automobiles. The average buyer is more concerned with mod cons, “CONNECTIVITY”, touch screens, sorry IPAD’s mounted in the vehicle. How it drives meh, they want it to drive itself so they can play on the phone while they just sit there like the mouf breathers they are.
Look at the Twins. They gave it S2000 esque power finally. It’s finally got the power to weight it so desperately needed. You’ve got a po’ man’s Cayman now. $35k for the premium trim with rear Torsen LSD, 6MT, Sachs suspension, Brembos. A real sports car, RWD, light weight, the whole package. The thing should be an avalanche of sales, and it’s not selling. The BRZ barely sells. The GR86 sells enough for Toyota to keep this thing going. It’s not an AP1 or AP2 but got damn it is the second coming. The fact that you can get one for what a S2000 used to cost, new, 20 years ago, should tell you everything. Yet the numbers are low. This buying public is just a clown show.

 

Nissan need Honda a lot more than Honda needs them

Ghosn was just on Bloomberg and said the same thing

 

And the sky is blue.

 

Sounds unforgettably memorable...

 

Adding Nissan to the mix gives Honda access to almost two decades of EV experience, real trucks, a true large / three-row SUV, rwd platforms (but old), in-house batteries soon (supposedly), and arguably a better luxury brand, but I wouldn't necessarily brag about Infiniti these days.

Instead of both offering something like 24 models each, they could offer 24 combined, and maybe even do better by specializing in different areas, like Nissan with sports and trucks, and Honda with cars and CUVs.

Honda is also motorcycles, airplanes, powersports, etc.

 

This is what you would hope, but because companies these days are ran by academics (at best), they'll eventually have the bright idea of hey instead of offering a CUV and SUV, why don't we just offer the same thing and apply different badges and call it the same because consumers are too dumb to know the different (some truth in that).

Like if you look at Hyundai/Kia right now, they keep insisting that they're different, and they've done a better job than alot of companies of the past with differentiating their products, but at the end of the day, they have a ton of redundancy. Kia brand can die off and be absorbed into Hyundai and zero people will care.

But I agree, Nissan has a body on frame and RWD architecture, along with their EV tech that Honda can leverage. But what's sorta dumb about what has been said is that yes I'm sure they want to share R&D, but frankly Honda can catch up fairly quickly in that space given their resources and experience. What the articles seem to indicate is that they're trying to take advantage of scale, but what's dumb is that if they merge they've effectively become one company which inevitably means one if not both companies will shrink in some capacity as they eliminate redudancies, and the synergy and effort needed to run and grow two separate entities will no longer be there. VW for a long time was trying to grow through acquisition, same with GM, meanwhile Ford and Toyota has more or less stopped doing that. So scale only works if the companies remain separated.

I have enough respect for Honda to believe that they can accomplish anything they put their mind to, but it just seems like lately they keep taking the easier way out to solve problems. Consider how many EV companies sprung up over night that have far more hurdles than Honda has, and they managed to make a compelling product, I don't see why Honda couldn't. They're just afraid to deviate from their mainstream CUV recipe. This applies to their enthusiast cars, it also applies to getting into EVs. By taking no risk, they're likely to create a bigger problem down the road.

Further, the timing of this merger seems to be odd when you consider a lot of OEMs have already expressed throttling down their EV efforts.

 

No, it’s just a tool in a tool box. It’s also why I now own 8 vehicles. You sure can get some stuff done if you aren’t on that buy/sell/trade bs.
Don’t need anything fancy for stop light to stop light driving. That wouldn’t be fun in a F80.

 

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That dick should be behind bars instead of running his mouth on Bloomberg.

 

I don't know every intricate detail, but it's my understanding he got completely railroaded by the Japanese government and his Japanese co-workers who were against his plans and agenda for Nissan. A lot of the "crimes" he committed were trumped up or fully fabricated.

Definitely worth some reading to get more of the story.