Re: How are these Japanese luxury brands doing these days?

JXStern wrote:

> 
> I still wish Honda/Acura would put out some V8 vehicles, but the RL
> body is probably just a little tight for it, and the cost of building
> on a new body is too high.  


I doubt we will ever see V-8 powered Hondas.  Honda's view seems to be 
that the V-6 is all the motor any street car ever will need.  Remember 
that Honda is led first and foremost by engineers, everyone else is 
sup****ting cast.  The engineers see a future where more fuel efficiency 
is needed and don't see any reason to make bigger more fuel thirst 
engines.  They really don't care that this means ignoring certain market 
segments.  Toyota and Honda obviously have different operating 
principles.  Toyota is focused on the mission to provide a vehicle for 
every purse and purpose, as Alfred Sloan of GM's great years famously 
said.  Honda is a rifle shot competitor which takes as it's prime 
directive "being a company society wants to have exist".   Honda thus 
puts it's speculative money and effort into small jet airplane 
development and robot development while Honda's products are rifle shots 
at particular market segments.  It is interesting that in Japan Honda is 
now the #2 automaker behind Toyota after unseating Nissan from that 
spot.  Considering that when Honda first moved up from motorcycles to 
automobiles the Japanese government tried to stop them this is a very 
interesting development.  Also, Honda has far fewer base designs and 
models than does Toyota.  Basically Honda has the Civic platform, the 
Accord platform, the Odyssey platform, the Fit platform.  It is truly 
stunning how many successful products they spin out of those.