Honda's new life without sports

[aaronng]

Yeah, but when it comes down to developing cars wouldn't you think that honda, as a whole, would want to win worldwide. Its great to delop a high performance car but its not so great if you can only sell it to 2 or 3 markets in the entire world.

Yes, they want to win worldwide, that's why they have best selling cars like the Accord Euro/TSX and the Civic. Their hi-po car won't sell well here because people here would rather buy a Ferrari/Lambo rather than a Honda for the same price. Once Honda builds up their reputation as a luxury car maker, I'm sure they can come back to building high performance models for all the markets, like what Audi is doing now with their S and RS lines, BMW with their M and Mercedes with AMG. Remember that Honda does not have a parent company like how Ferrari and Lambo has. They can't hedge all their bets on hi-po models and expect to survive. An interesting exception is Porsche. But then again, their cars don't cost over $400,000 except for the turbo and GT models.

With all those boffins workin on asimo, you'd think that they'd be able to use that intellegence to work out a better way of getting honda australia up to par with the rest of the world.

As I said, Honda Japan /= Honda Australia. It's like a franchise. If Honda Australia wanted a particular model, they would have to build a valid business model before they can even get it. It's not a just matter of transferring car stock to and fro. Same for engineers/designers/marketing. Honda Japan isn't going to give manpower or time to Honda Australia for free.