Honda boosts warranty

Honda has moved to a five-year unlimited kilometres warranty for its new vehicle range, including the exciting new Civic Type R hyper-hatch.

In-place from July 1, the new offer replaces Honda’s three-year/100,000km warranty.

While Mitsubishi offers a five years/130,000km warranty, Honda is the first Japanese brand to offer unlimited kilometre coverage.

Renault, Skoda and Hyundai also offer five-years/unlimited kilometres, Citroen and MG offer six years/unlimited kilometres and Kia an industry-leading seven years/unlimited kilometres.

Honda Australia director Stephen Collins confirmed the extension of the warranty period was being solely funded by Honda Australia, but had the support of headquarters in Japan.

“This is to provide greater confidence to our customers in the purchase of new Honda,” Mr Collins said.

“More importantly it is part of one of our strategies to put the customers at the centre of what we are doing. It really shows that we are serious about improving the ownership proposition for our customers.

“We know, in the industry, building a really strong customer experience is a really important part of building a strong brand.”

Honda will restrict vehicles bought for commercial use, such as rental and taxi fleets, to a five-year 140,000km warranty.

Hondas sold in June to private customers came with a bonus two-year warranty extension.

Honda previously offered an optional Warranty Plus scheme which included a five year/140,000km warranty with roadside assistance. The scheme will continue, but Honda didn’t specify what it would include.

Honda’s Tailored Servicing plan remains unchanged. Its servicing intervals are 10,000km or 12 months.

Extended warranties are often introduced by brands seeking to reassure customers about the quality of their vehicles; Kia, MG and Jeep (the latter recently moving to five-years), are examples of this. But Collins insisted this wasn’t the case for Honda.

“I think we have a very strong reputation for quality, reliability and so forth,” he said. “It’s not reactive to an issue, or problem or whatever.

“We want to get on the front foot with it and improve our ownership proposition.

“Product is one thing of course, we have lots of new product coming into the market.”

The move to the extended warranty comes amid a period of strong activity for Honda Australia, which recently launched the Civic hatch, will soon launch the new generation CR-V medium SUV and will have the hotly-anticipated Civic Type R on-sale in October.

Honda sales are up 11 per cent so far in 2017 and the company is targeting to beat 48,000 sales in the calendar year.