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T here are few brands in India that enjoy the kind of brand equity that Honda does. The mere utterance of the name brings certain words to mind – reliability, efficiency and dependability. You would also believe that having been in the car business for 14 years in our country, they would have an astute sense of what’s right and wrong for us, especially since they have done no wrong with their two-wheeler business. Belief and reality, strangely, aren’t bedfellows here.
Despite notching in some success, Honda for the most part, has failed to put its ear to the ground when it mattered most. Diesel technology, for instance, is just missing from its portfolio and as our scoop story on its diesel plans revealed last month, it is still a good two years away from that. From my early days in auto journalism over six years ago, Honda had been advised, forewarned and reminded by our ilk that it needed a diesel motor, which, for the longest time, fell to deaf ears. Then when its first hatchback, the Jazz, was launched, the pricing went awry and silently the brilliant hatch suffered for two years. Apart from the City, every other model was taking a pounding in the market and briefly, the City too found its fortunes floundering.
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