AUTO INDUSTRY
Honda’s Acura dilemma
When Honda’s Acura brand showed off its new flagship RLX sedan at the recent Los Angeles Auto Show, the auto company with Ohio operations was confronted with a marketing conundrum — how to brand the car as a luxury rival to BMW or Lexus rather than just a more expensive Honda.
It’s a problem of Honda’s own making. When it launched Acura back in 1986, Honda conceived an “intercept” brand.
“It was to be the next step for the Accord owner,” said John Mendel, executive vice president of American Honda Motor Co., “a place to move up without going to the European luxury models.”
That proved successful for years. Acura sales peaked at nearly 210,000 in 2005, according to automotive website MotorIntelligence. But as luxury car competition grew more varied and fierce, Acura became what Mendel called a “tweener” brand: upscale but not quite luxury. Sales plummeted to barely 123,000 last year — about half the annual volume of each of the top luxury makes: BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus.
“Acura is not defined, other than to be a step up from Honda,” said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc.
— Los Angeles Times
