Honda vs. Hyundai
The first nice car that I was able to buy was an Acura Integra Type R. This was in 1997 and I had my name on the list for one of the first Porsche Boxsters, but the Type R offered more performance for half the money. I didn’t know what a Type R was, but when I took one for a test drive and heard the engine come onto the second cam lobe at 5,800rpm, I bought it before the test drive finished. I took it straight to the track and thrashed the living daylights out of it for 3 years. I bounced the engine off the 8,800rpm rev limiter nearly every shift. I think I went off on every corner at Race City, crashed it twice, went through a dozen sets of A032R competition tires, and about 10 gallons of brake fluid. I gave the guys with their Porsches and Ferraris a really hard time, to the point that they wouldn’t go out on the track at the same time as me lest their mirrors be full of a white Honda.
I came away with two Solo 1 Class wins and the car was still more or less in one piece. That is until it was stolen and stripped for parts - which happened to a lot of Type Rs. It is still regarded as the best handling front wheel drive car ever built. Good ones can reach over $USD80,000 on Bring-A-Trailer - three times their original MSRP. The car really defined the import car scene of the late 1990s.
I was a huge Honda Fan. I had seen Senna dominate in F1, and watched the Real Time Racing Type R’s clean up on Speedvision. The more I studied Honda engineering, the more impressed I became: Oval Piston motorcycles, humanoid robots, mountain bikes with carbon fibre and titanium gearboxes, innovative private jets… I bought one of the original Honda Insight Hybrids which was a spectacular piece of engineering. With the possible exception of the ultra exotic $250k VW XL1, it was likely the most efficient combustion engined car ever made. The original NSX of 1990 made the period Ferraris look silly.
My friend Chase raced another Integra with me in Solo 1. He was a Mechanical Engineering student at U of C and the team lead for their Formula SAE race team. This was team of students who, on their own time, built a motorcycle-engined, single seat, open wheeled race car. This car would be entered into the Formula SAE competition which saw teams from different Universities across North America build a car and then take it down to Detroit to compete against one another. Most used Honda engines. Honda was there for the judging, and gave each of the Calgary team members job offers.
Honda would give their young engineers crashed or test cars, and give them a budget to build and race the car in SCCA showroom stock events. If you were a motivated car-mad young engineer, Honda was the company that you wanted to work for. Honda made cars with a degree of engineering that was a couple notches above what you had any right to expect on a volume produced automobile. That is why they were the choice of most of the Tuner community.
Honda would move engineers around and give them interesting non-automotive projects to refine and broaden their skills: A downhill racing mountain bike, Asimo humanoid robot and HondaJet were but some of the examples. They also cycled many of their engineers through their Formula 1 and Indycar racing teams. This trained the engineers to work under pressure and to come up with innovative solutions to problems. Even their ad campaigns were special…
Sadly, my enthusiasm for the brand has all but disappeared. The company just seems to hold themselves back. It took almost 20 years for them to replace the NSX, after scrapping several concepts. With a few exceptions, the entire product line is just plain boring.
Honda doesn’t even offer a BEV vehicle for sale in North America. Their first, an electric SUV called the Prologue due in 2024, looks like an adaptation of an ICE platform, not the effort that they are capable of. Honda sales and market share have been sliding - Honda posted the greatest sales decline of any major manufacturer in 2022 according to Automotive News*.
Other Manufacturers are trying harder. Up until a few years ago Hyundai wasn’t a brand that I thought anything about. Now, products from the Hyundai/Kia/Genesis group are the ones I recommend most.
Hyundai-Kia-Genesis hired some of the best European styling talent. Luc Donckerwolke, who came from the VW-Audi Group, was named Chief Design Officer in 2017. Previously, he designed the Lamborghini Murciélago and Gallardo, Audi A2 and was the Styling Director for Bentley.
Hyundai holds a 12% stake in the Rimac Group, joining Porsche as the other major manufacturer stakeholder. Rimac technology and expertise will find its way into the upcoming performance-oriented ’N’ Version of the Ioniq 5.
The E-GMP electric platform cars - Hyundai Ioniq 5, Ioniq 6, Genesis GV60 and Kia EV6 - have won almost every automotive industry award offered over the last two years. The Ioinq 5 won ‘World Car Of the Year’, ‘Electric Car Of the Year', and ‘Design Of The Year’ in 2022. The Ioniq 6 won the same awards in 2023 and the Kia EV6 GT picked up the ‘World Performance Car Of The Year’ award.** Hyundai, Kia and Genesis products are on almost every ’10 Best’ or ‘Recommended’ magazine or website list.
The inescapable reality of the automobile business is that it is about product. Automobile companies do well when they have exciting products to sell. When CEO’s concentrate on share price, mergers and cost cutting they generally don’t. Hyundai-Kia has doubled their sales in 15 years, despite supply chain challenges that have seen Honda sales collapse. I worry for Honda, they were such a great company.
Sources:
** https://www.worldcarawards.com/web/
Lawrence Romanosky is a 'Car Guy' operating a Specialty Car service, restoration and brokerage business out of Calgary Canada. He is also trying to convince fellow Calgarians of the merits of electric cars.
Lromanosky@me.com.
403-607-8625
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