Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but it seems Honda are "dong a Toyota". The new MD is hell bent on his 80K units a year and they are being told to realign themselves with chasing the fleet markets.

Have you seen the ads for the new 30990 driveaway American Accords? That is the immediate future for OzHonda.

Where will it get them? Not far in the short term and potentially fatal to their prestige in the long. The fleet market ploy is doomed to fail as the big fleets won't touch them with a ten foot pole due to servicing costs and that only leaves the smaller fleets which are Holden/Ford dominated and heavily influenced by the whole V8 Supercar nonsense.

Ah, well. He'll go the way of most MD's with a bright idea and be recalled to Japan sometime in early 2009. Hopefully his replacement will try to undo the damage.