UTSUNOMIYA, Japan - At a two-day gathering for Honda’s suppliers in March, Chief Executive Takahiro Hachigo sounded the alarm.
Expected to be announced early next year, the reforms are meant to simplify the way Honda designs cars and put its engineering resources to more effective use at a time when it needs to develop cars for an electric age, the sources said. In the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the name Honda struck terror into the hearts of executives at the big three U.S. carmakers in Detroit because they simply couldn’t match its low-cost, efficient, well-built cars.
In J.D. Power’s study of vehicle dependability in the United States, one of Honda’s two main auto markets along with China, the Japanese brand fell to 18th place this year from 5th in 2015 and 4th in 2002, its highest ranking. They called on suppliers to use more common parts, from engines and transmissions to door handles, rear view mirrors and even knobs and switches, according to two people who attended the meeting and slides Honda used in presentations.
The explosion in the number of regional models had an unintended consequence: the engineering became more complex and the elevated workload led to lapses in quality and costly recalls, two company sources said. He said he was aiming to cut engineers’ workloads by about a third to free up time and resources for Honda’s technical divisions to research technologies for the cars of the future.
Honda is building shitty cars. They will be alright in 5 years time. For now consumers should not buy Honda.
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