When everything seems to be going wrong, hire Jerry Seinfeld, bring back Ferris Bueller and pray. And even then things might not improve all that much.
That?s the predicament for Honda as it tries to recover from its troubles in the past year, when a series of natural disasters in Asia caused sales to plunge, and an important model, the revamped Civic, got such a poor reception
that the company rushed to make changes.
Honda?s chief executive, Takanobu Ito, was so fearful that the company might be ?jinxed? that he spent New Year?s Day at a Japanese shrine in the hope of eliminating the ?bad omens?, he said recently. In commercials for Honda shown during the Super Bowl, Seinfeld is desperate to get the first Acura NSX, a concept car not coming to market for several years, and Matthew Broderick plays himself, taking a Bueller-like day off away from the movie set and giving a shout-out to the Honda CR-V.
The two ads were highly rated by viewers, and Honda is off to a better start in 2012, breaking a string of eight consecutive monthly sales declines in the US with an 8.8% increase in January.
On Monday, Moody?s Investors Service cut Honda?s credit-rating outlook to negative from stable, citing ?significant challenges? for Honda and doubts about how much market share the company can regain even after dealer inventories are back to full strength.
Honda executives, while projecting a 60% drop in net profits for the fiscal year that ends in March, have expressed confidence that the company is on the brink of a significant rebound. One goal is a 25% sales increase in the US this year, helped by a redesigned CR-V crossover vehicle and several new models for its upscale Acura brand.
Honda unveiled the production versions of the Acuras, the RDX crossover and ILX compact car, this week at the Chicago auto show. They are part of a major push to expand Acura, whose sales last year suffered even more than the mainstream Honda brand. Honda executives have said they hope to sell 180,000 Acuras this year, which would represent a 46 percent increase. Still, the NSX featured in the Super Bowl ad is not scheduled to go on sale for about three years, and with a price expected to top $100,000, it will not be a very high-volume car.
Honda was hit harder than other automakers by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan last March. Its factories in Japan, North America and elsewhere were forced to stop or slow production for months because of parts shortages, and dealerships across the US sold out of some popular models as a result.
A rival, Nissan, even ran a commercial showing a loaded Nissan car carrier passing an idle Honda dealer in an empty lot.
Honda was just beginning to recover from the tsunami when severe flooding in Thailand compounded the shortages. Executives say dealers should finally be back to normal inventory by the end of March, putting the company back on a level playing field with its rivals for the first time in nearly a year. Honda?s inventories grew 38% from December to January.
For decades, Honda had been on a relentless march upward, steadily expanding its market share by churning out ever-larger quantities of cars consistently rated as the most fuel-efficient and reliable. Though it has never been able to catch its rival, Toyota, in size, Honda always seemed equally invincible as it wrested control of the American car market from Detroit.