since Acura has existed, I think its watered down honda's brand equity and they haven't done anything with Acura to make it a credible brand vs. Infinit, Lexus, MB, BMW, Audi.
it basically highlights the problem that Gm has always faced and now honda and toyota will have to face up to.
Having your image so dependent on st@rcher culture and fast and furious stuff waters down the brand too. No adult with kids wants to drive the same car that some dork has a fart can muffler and bright green paint on. Oh, and i forgot the 2 foot high 'aircraft aluminum' spoiler. Tell me those doinks don't destroy the brand.
You want to expand and soon find out you need more than one brand and several more models.
So all of a sudden, each additional model puts you under increased scrutiny. If you survive that, you ultimately have to feed the monster with more models and some of them are iffy (Ridgeline) and you soon find out being all things to all people is not that easy. And it ends up diluting your product line, just by default. At least in the perception eyes of the public. I mean, do you see Eddie bauer making biker wear?
it will catch up with them over time.........what we see with honda are the seeds of its growth being a strain and the fact that toyota is going balls out for every segment and honda is not.
Right now we have a phase where a large chunk of our carbuyers are buying hoyotahonda for the first time. time will tell how many of those customers will be so enomored with those cars like the original hard core die hard hoyotahonda fans. And as more folks buy those brands, look at how many more trips to service will get talked about around the watercooler. It will be at that point where the urban legends that have created about hoyotahonda will start to become destroyed. Lots of olks are expecting that they will never have to get this car fixed. When the stories start rolling in about how yes, you do need to fix hondas and toyotas too, the legend (no pun inteded) will start to come down to reality.