I agree, best outboard I ever owned. I had a 50 for a kicker on my sailboat. I put 1400 hours on it without a single problem. I'm not sure why they all went out but when I went boat shopping at the Miami boat show, no boat dealers sold them anymore.

fltsfshr

 

Honda outboards tend to be heavy and expensive and they have not kept up in the horsepower wars.

 

Good read

I agree with much of what the article says

And although the S2000 is the 7th Honda I have bought, I assure you, the next car purchase will indeed NOT be a Honda

The thing the article does not mention, and it's too bad it did not, but the Honda motorcycle business is going through much the same, die-hard Honda bike fans are turning to other brands because Honda seems to have forgotten why people buy bikes

 

I always have to smile at writers that ignore the good and focus on the bad, thus delivering an "irrefutable" argument. He never mentions the runaway successes of some recent Honda releases (Fit, CR-V, Odyssey. MDX, new RDX).

Funny how the general public completely disagrees with that. He picks on the Crosstour but ignores the CR-V. He points at the Civic but ignores the extremely-well-received RDX that they just released (and was already developed and ready to roll when the 9th gen Civic came out and was bashed so heavily). He's picking and choosing to make it worse than it is, especially evident when he points to the last RDX and ignores the new one that is outselling everything in its class. The Odyssey is a top-seller and the MDX continues to sell extremely well (and was a huge upgrade over the last one).

In fact, he's actually arguing against himself. Honda realized the old RDX wasn't what consumers wanted, so they changed it. They realized the new Civic wasn't quite what people expected and so they're changing it. This refutes his very argument that Honda is out of touch and doesn't realize what the market wants (the sales and obvious success of so many other vehicles also refutes that idea, but he ignores that as well).

Focusing on V6 vs turbo-4? If he took a moment to do some research, he'd see that virtually ALL of the turbo'd vehicles are getting less-than-optimal MPG, not meeting their EPA ratings and don't even really offer a lighter package while still being substantially more complex to own and maintain. Not to mention, most are still slower than a V6 (new Camry whomps all over the Sonata 2.0T, for instance).

When a writer says things like:

...then you know they've missed the point. He's looking at today. Honda is looking at today, tomorrow, and the next fifty years. Innovation isn't confined to just cars - it comes from different areas, different people and through different ways.

If he's so smart, why isn't he a successful CEO at a major manufacturing company, showing them how to do it? Because he's much better sitting in a chair, pointing fingers at a company that...(wait for it)...is having record sales this year.

I'll be the first to admit that Honda has had some horrible misses in recent years. It's undeniable. But just because they aren't making what I want doesn't make them dumb, insensitive or even out of touch, necessarily. They're allowed to learn, just like the rest of us, and they certainly have different reasons to exist (they want to make money, we want them to make cars that 99% of the population really doesn't want). One thing I can tell you, though - this writer isn't the one to do it. He can't see past his own nose.

The competition have gotten better. The gap between the best and worst in each vehicle class is getting smaller. It's really not until 100K+ miles that you start to see what the cars are really made of.

 

I wondered if Honda's motorcycle business was going through the same gyrations as it's auto business.

I have a Honda lawn mower, bought in 1987 and used quite a bit until about 3 years ago. For the last three years it's been sitting in our barn. It hasn't been started or moved in 3 years. Last week we took it out of the barn, filled it with gas, checked the oil and it started on the first pull. When I bought it I paid quite a bit more for it than if I'd have bought a typical big box brand, but I wanted a quality piece of equipment and bought the Honda.

Same with my snowblower. I bought it a few years ago. It has track drive and I have a 125 foot, slightly inclined driveway. It starts on the first pull, and so far in the three years we own it, it hasn't given us any problems. I paid significantly more for it that if I'd bought a big box snowblower but I wanted a quality piece of equipment and bought the Honda.

My point is Honda never used to be concerned with being more expensive than it's competition. Back then Honda felt that better engineering, better innovation and better quality would outshine the price difference between them and their competition. And, they were right. The same was true of their cars. As soon as they became frightened of the economy and decided that they had to compete on price, the bottom fell out. A great deal of their problem comes from the fact that they cheapened the cars, stopped caring about being innovative and allowed their quality control to fall. Much of this is the result of trying to compete on the basis of price by cutting every corner possible. I agree with the author, the market isn't stupid. If one supplier doesn't give the marketplace what it wants, another will, and the market will buy from the new supplier.

Sometimes success is the worst thing that can happen. It allows the manufacturer/suppliers to begin to believe their own press releases. The market knows better.

Without question, Honda's management and marketing people have failed them.

 

Jonboy,

The first question I'd ask you is are those vehicles being sold at full profit, or are the sales numbers being achieved because the cars are being sold at bargin prices to move inventory? I think you have to take that into consideration before you celebrate the return of Honda based on sales numbers.

The second question I'd ask you is with all of the successes that you point to do they, combined, make up for the market share that Honda's lost to it's competition? The problem is not that the competition has gotten better but rather that the competition has bypassed Honda because Honda fell asleep and stopped behaving like Honda.

As I said in an earlier post,Honda today is very much like Sony was 15 years ago. The leading innovator in the marketplace fell asleep and now, in both cases, is struggling to catch up.

 

I find the Honda engine on my pressure washer to be very finicky.

 

My pressure washer is reaching the end of it days. I went online looking at new ones. I found several bad Honda reviews on their 3500 psi washer. Biggest complaint was it really wasn't delivering the psi promised. Last time I bought one, Honda was at the top of list as best.

I'm sure Honda will figure it out. They've been hit really hard the last couple years. They lost a freighter full of cars near the Aleutians, the flood in SE Asia and the earthquake in Japan all cost Honda a lot of money. That has to have an affect.

fltsfshr

 

I'm not so sure. Take a look at the roster of formally great, market leading companies such as Microsoft, K-Mart, Sears, Sony, Xerox and Kodak among others. After they fell from grace they were never able to regain their position in the market. The only two companies that have been successful in reinventing themselves in the last number of years are Apple and IBM. All of the others have struggled to catch up.

 

Jonboy defending Honda to no end