Honda's premium brand in Australia

Honda is considering introducing its upmarket brand, Acura, to the Australian market. The name, which has been previously reserved for North American markets, will be introduced to Japan in 2009.

Assuming all goes well with the roll-out in Japan -- and providing an effective business case can be mounted -- Acura could also be introduced to Australia.

Yasuhide Mizuno, Honda's MD and CEO, admitted that the feasibility of launching Acura in Australia was currently being studied and the most likely scenario, assuming the company goes ahead with the idea is to establish Acura dealers in just Sydney and Melbourne. An alternative plan points towards a select few Honda dealers taking on responsibility for Acura sales through co-located facilities.

Although nothing is decided as yet, Mizuno suggested that the introduction of Acura to Australia might lead to a shake-up of Honda's local model range; Acura selling "NS-X, MDX, Legend and the new Euro" (which is the Acura TSX in the US, more here), with Accord, Civic and Jazz sold under "the 'H' badge".

Reading between the lines, the Acura brand may lead to an expanded product range in Australia, with RHD countries such as Japan and Australia able to apply more pressure to the American Honda R&D effort through the Acura supply chain.

At the present, Honda in Japan has less say than the Japanese would like in the RHD engineering of vehicles originally designed in America (such as the latest Accord).

As Yasuhide Mizuno says: "America's R&D [team] only [thinks] about their own domestic [situation]. They don't think about Japan or Australia."

In respect of right-hand drive development, Mizuno says: "At $5 million, $6 million, amortisation is very [expensive]."

So Honda in the US charges the cost of RHD development back to Honda in Japan if the vehicle is being developed specifically for the Japanese market.

Since Australia is now the eighth largest Honda market in the world (surpassing Germany, France and Italy for sales), it's suddenly an RHD market which, with Acura sold locally, could disburse some of those RHD development costs. That consequently means potentially, a greater variety of models available -- for Japan and Australia.

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