# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
The new CEO has certainly got the power of dreams. But will there be product to match the invention?

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
The new CEO has certainly got the power of dreams. But will there be product to match the invention?

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
The new CEO has certainly got the power of dreams. But will there be product to match the invention?

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
The new CEO has certainly got the power of dreams. But will there be product to match the invention?

# data.attributes.body.value
How can Honda mean so much, and yet so little? The formidable breadth of this company’s products, the stretch of its endeavours and the vitality of its spirit almost defy belief. So you’d expect Honda’s strategists to be pursuing a well-defined direction, and their marketers laying out a clear image for a willing public to lap up. But it just isn’t happening. If we say Honda, do you think of the Civic Type-R or the Jazz… acne or osteoporosis? Currently, Honda’s most expensive car in Europe is a £30k family-friendly diesel crossover, and now it’s parachuting in a madly complicated mid-engined supercar at five times the price. Where’s the cohesive narrative?

Well, Honda isn’t a car company, or a motorbike or mobility company. It’s not even an engine company, although it sold a quite staggering 28 million internal combustion engines last year. It wants to sell jet planes and robots and power plants as well as strimmers and supercars. Honda is an engineering company.

Takahiro Hachigo, Honda’s CEO since just February this year, is meeting a group of European press at the Tokyo motor show. Hachigo walks in, settles and makes his brief opening remarks. After the gracious but formal Japanese welcome, his first statement is simple: “I am an engineer.”

Indeed. He’s also worked worldwide, having been plucked from an assignment in China to start the top job. Before that, he did a year in Europe, and the US previously. He’s speaking English through an interpreter. I suspect he doesn’t really need to, but interpretation reduces the chance of gross misunderstandings. Even so, it’s a pity because the subtleties of a person’s intentions come across more clearly when they are choosing their own words even if those words are foreign to them.

Well, for sure, one of his messages today is strong. Honda will remain an engineering powerhouse. Look across the company, and you see what he’s on about. Sorry, this article is full of lists, and here’s another, a diverse one. The first HondaJet planes will soon be delivered. Robotics research continues as Asimo gets ever more intelligent and able. The fuel-cell car is entering its first production-scale generation. The NSX is as complicated as almost any piston-engined car. Honda’s motorbike racing operation is brutally effective and Touring Car racing flourishes, even if the Formula One activity conspicuously doesn’t. In all those projects, huge money is being spent by engineers, for no revenue yet.

All of that is funded, of course, by Honda’s immense success in its mainstream endeavours. Its car sales are huge in Asia and North America – it has an almost 10 per cent market share in the US, and the only players that are bigger rely heavily on big pickups. In motorbikes of all sizes and outboard engines and generators, Honda wipes the floor with everyone round the world. Solid moneymakers all. But in European car sales, Honda struggles at around one per cent share.

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Hachigo’s cure for this? His time in Europe, he says, taught him that we have high expectations. He wants to strengthen regional operations in Europe, and bring out “challenging new products”. Europe is important to his Honda. He reminds us Honda has refreshed its line-up in Europe this year and launched significant new cars: the new Jazz, the HR-V, the Civic Type-R, the Civic estate not long before.

At which point, TopGear interjects.

If Europe is so important to Honda, can he really be content with this introduction schedule? Those cars only arrived together this year because they’re so late: the ‘new’ Jazz and HR-V have been on sale in Japan since 2013, the Civic Type-R was painfully slow to market and a Civic estate is returning only after a lengthy absence.

“We do want to launch as early as possible in Europe,” Hachigo replies, “but it took time to adapt the Jazz and HR-V for Europe. We are working on a new development system now that will make future launches more timely.”

Hmm. While that rethought development system is in gestation, the problem will actually worsen. For the first time, the new generation of European and American Civics will be fundamentally the same car. Yet even though the US four-door is launching now, we won’t get our hatchback until 2017. Hachigo acknowledges the problem, but doesn’t go into details about his solution. At the moment, Honda sells only four cars in Europe: Jazz, Civic, HR-V and CR-V. No more CR-Z, Insight or Accord, no more hybrids.

Of course, it’s not just the new mainstream Civic that we’ll have to wait for. Honda engineers seem to be compulsively perfectionist. It’ll still be many months before you can buy an NSX. The Civic Type-R took forever. The HondaJet project is taking orders but not making deliveries. Asimo is all about research; no sales plans are forthcoming. The fuel-cell car is great, but it’s out next year: Toyota and Hyundai are here now.

And a Grand Prix win? “We haven’t met expectations.” He says the power unit, being late, didn’t integrate well enough with the McLaren chassis. “There was not enough reliability or power. It’s reliable now, so we need power. We are making every effort. We encountered things the engineers had never experienced. Give us time.”

Ah, those same old themes. Engineering ways around new problems, and taking time to do it. Normally Honda sets its own timetables, so the management don’t get bent out of shape if a project takes time to deliver. But the brutal weekly spotlight of the Grand Prix circus doesn’t allow the luxury of time.

Honda, in its three eras of Grand Prix racing, has, I suspect, always treated it more as an engineering exercise than a marketing one. I sense Hachigo is different, and might understand the marketing and branding imperative.

Because in Europe, Honda just isn’t getting the brand recognition it deserves. I float with Hachigo a theory I’ve long held about his company. Its spirit of engineering experimentation is, in a way, actually harmful to the brand. The designers and engineers love to turn out something new, but then they don’t give it time to settle in the public mind. Honda thinks it’s OK to launch and withdraw body styles and market sectors willy-nilly. The S2000 was loved by its owners who are now brassed off by the lack of a replacement. Same with the Accord estate here and the cult Element in the US. And the Insight and various people carriers. There were years of gap between generations of Civic Type-R and NSX.

Is that OK, I ask him? After all, most car companies that are well-understood and which command a price premium because of it have policies of making series of cars in steadily evolving successive generations, nurturing the customers rather than confusing and abandoning them. “Yes,” he says. “I’d like to cherish vehicles, including the NSX and Civic Type-R, and continue them in future generations. I believe continuity is needed to build a brand.”

This feature was originally published in the January 2016 issue of Top Gear magazine.

# data.attributes.body.processed
How can Honda mean so much, and yet so little? The formidable breadth of this company’s products, the stretch of its endeavours and the vitality of its spirit almost defy belief. So you’d expect Honda’s strategists to be pursuing a well-defined direction, and their marketers laying out a clear image for a willing public to lap up. But it just isn’t happening. If we say Honda, do you think of the Civic Type-R or the Jazz… acne or osteoporosis? Currently, Honda’s most expensive car in Europe is a £30k family-friendly diesel crossover, and now it’s parachuting in a madly complicated mid-engined supercar at five times the price. Where’s the cohesive narrative?

Well, Honda isn’t a car company, or a motorbike or mobility company. It’s not even an engine company, although it sold a quite staggering 28 million internal combustion engines last year. It wants to sell jet planes and robots and power plants as well as strimmers and supercars. Honda is an engineering company.

Takahiro Hachigo, Honda’s CEO since just February this year, is meeting a group of European press at the Tokyo motor show. Hachigo walks in, settles and makes his brief opening remarks. After the gracious but formal Japanese welcome, his first statement is simple: “I am an engineer.”

Indeed. He’s also worked worldwide, having been plucked from an assignment in China to start the top job. Before that, he did a year in Europe, and the US previously. He’s speaking English through an interpreter. I suspect he doesn’t really need to, but interpretation reduces the chance of gross misunderstandings. Even so, it’s a pity because the subtleties of a person’s intentions come across more clearly when they are choosing their own words even if those words are foreign to them.

Well, for sure, one of his messages today is strong. Honda will remain an engineering powerhouse. Look across the company, and you see what he’s on about. Sorry, this article is full of lists, and here’s another, a diverse one. The first HondaJet planes will soon be delivered. Robotics research continues as Asimo gets ever more intelligent and able. The fuel-cell car is entering its first production-scale generation. The NSX is as complicated as almost any piston-engined car. Honda’s motorbike racing operation is brutally effective and Touring Car racing flourishes, even if the Formula One activity conspicuously doesn’t. In all those projects, huge money is being spent by engineers, for no revenue yet.

All of that is funded, of course, by Honda’s immense success in its mainstream endeavours. Its car sales are huge in Asia and North America – it has an almost 10 per cent market share in the US, and the only players that are bigger rely heavily on big pickups. In motorbikes of all sizes and outboard engines and generators, Honda wipes the floor with everyone round the world. Solid moneymakers all. But in European car sales, Honda struggles at around one per cent share.

Hachigo’s cure for this? His time in Europe, he says, taught him that we have high expectations. He wants to strengthen regional operations in Europe, and bring out “challenging new products”. Europe is important to his Honda. He reminds us Honda has refreshed its line-up in Europe this year and launched significant new cars: the new Jazz, the HR-V, the Civic Type-R, the Civic estate not long before.

At which point, TopGear interjects.

If Europe is so important to Honda, can he really be content with this introduction schedule? Those cars only arrived together this year because they’re so late: the ‘new’ Jazz and HR-V have been on sale in Japan since 2013, the Civic Type-R was painfully slow to market and a Civic estate is returning only after a lengthy absence.

“We do want to launch as early as possible in Europe,” Hachigo replies, “but it took time to adapt the Jazz and HR-V for Europe. We are working on a new development system now that will make future launches more timely.”

Hmm. While that rethought development system is in gestation, the problem will actually worsen. For the first time, the new generation of European and American Civics will be fundamentally the same car. Yet even though the US four-door is launching now, we won’t get our hatchback until 2017. Hachigo acknowledges the problem, but doesn’t go into details about his solution. At the moment, Honda sells only four cars in Europe: Jazz, Civic, HR-V and CR-V. No more CR-Z, Insight or Accord, no more hybrids.

Of course, it’s not just the new mainstream Civic that we’ll have to wait for. Honda engineers seem to be compulsively perfectionist. It’ll still be many months before you can buy an NSX. The Civic Type-R took forever. The HondaJet project is taking orders but not making deliveries. Asimo is all about research; no sales plans are forthcoming. The fuel-cell car is great, but it’s out next year: Toyota and Hyundai are here now.

And a Grand Prix win? “We haven’t met expectations.” He says the power unit, being late, didn’t integrate well enough with the McLaren chassis. “There was not enough reliability or power. It’s reliable now, so we need power. We are making every effort. We encountered things the engineers had never experienced. Give us time.”

Ah, those same old themes. Engineering ways around new problems, and taking time to do it. Normally Honda sets its own timetables, so the management don’t get bent out of shape if a project takes time to deliver. But the brutal weekly spotlight of the Grand Prix circus doesn’t allow the luxury of time.

Honda, in its three eras of Grand Prix racing, has, I suspect, always treated it more as an engineering exercise than a marketing one. I sense Hachigo is different, and might understand the marketing and branding imperative.

Because in Europe, Honda just isn’t getting the brand recognition it deserves. I float with Hachigo a theory I’ve long held about his company. Its spirit of engineering experimentation is, in a way, actually harmful to the brand. The designers and engineers love to turn out something new, but then they don’t give it time to settle in the public mind. Honda thinks it’s OK to launch and withdraw body styles and market sectors willy-nilly. The S2000 was loved by its owners who are now brassed off by the lack of a replacement. Same with the Accord estate here and the cult Element in the US. And the Insight and various people carriers. There were years of gap between generations of Civic Type-R and NSX.

Is that OK, I ask him? After all, most car companies that are well-understood and which command a price premium because of it have policies of making series of cars in steadily evolving successive generations, nurturing the customers rather than confusing and abandoning them. “Yes,” he says. “I’d like to cherish vehicles, including the NSX and Civic Type-R, and continue them in future generations. I believe continuity is needed to build a brand.”

This feature was originally published in the January 2016 issue of Top Gear magazine.

# data.attributes.field_standfirst
The new CEO has certainly got the power of dreams. But will there be product to match the invention?