Honda News: Honda Slowing Production, Cutting Shifts

[Drew Dowdell]

Honda is cutting back on production at two of its U.S. plants in anticipation of a slide in sales.  The Marysville, Ohio plant and Honda of Indiana are the two plants being affected.  The cuts primarily come to the Accord and Civic built in Marysville. Marysville operates two lines and one shift at Marysville on Line 1 will be suspended temporarily. That line produces the Accord, CR-V, ILX, and TLX, but the cuts there will mostly impact Accord.  Acura production is unchanged at this time.  The CR-V is also produced in Indiana so some production can be shifted from Marysville to there. This news comes after the announcement of the closure of Honda's Swindon UK manufacturing plant which builds the CR-V for Europe and the Honda Civic Hatchback and Civic Type-R for the U.S.

Honda sales are down 0.9% for the year, but the Accord has slipped 5.9% July YTD, and the Civic which is Honda's second most popular model has slipped 2.1% July YTD. CR-V, which is Honda's biggest seller is also down 0.9%, but a light refresh is in the works for the CR-V and should debut soon.

Honda says these adjustments are to help maintain Honda's sales discipline and to flex to the shift in market demand away from sedans. Honda has already announced they are looking to trim fat from their model lineup and have fewer regionally specific models. They will also be reducing the number of variations available to one third of what they are today.  These plans are to be completed by 2025.

View full article

[David]

Piss poor styling, just Meh interiors and the coming recession due to trade wars and just a need for people to focus on paying down debt will cause for this adjustment to happen.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-oil-is-likely-to-be-chinas-next-target-as-trade-war-rages-energy-analysts-warn/ar-AAFz5vu?li=BBnbfcL

Interesting read, but a glut of cheap oil with a global recession will cause massive adjustment to happen.

[riviera74]

Can't blame them.  Their biggest seller is the CR-V rather than the Accord, followed by all those crossovers that it seems almost everyone wants these days.

[regfootball]

Test Drove an Accord Sport 2.0 last week.  Nice car but not worth a lot of hype.  For a sedan, one of the better examples out there of a satisfying rig, just overrated.

And by saying that, yes, it is true, sedans will continue to decrease, So accord will continue to see falling sales.

It may have helped if Honda hadn't put an ugly wrapper on the car.

[daves87rs]

I see Honda still continuing to slide, but not too much more.

GM, Ford, and some others, on the other hand......

[texas99alpha]

I have a lot of praise for Honda product - I just bought a new Accord Touring model. Hard to find - dealers tend to stock way too many base LX and Sport trims. Amazing car for the money and the features - light years ahead of GM and Ford. GM is seeing some weakness on SUVs. It seems to me a little early to cut sedans in favor of crossover SUVs like GM and Ford are doing. I don't mind variant trimming, but seems to me if you can share a platform between a crossover and a sedan, you can reduce development costs for the sedan and get away with lower sales - all the while maintaining model flexibility for changing consumer tastes. 

Just when you think you've figured out the consumer - you haven't. Tastes change on a dime - something the industry still doesn't understand.