‘GM taking over Honda would be a disaster’

The top enterprise on the global motorsports phase for the duration of these initially days of summer season 2021? If I experienced to select one, it would be Honda. Appropriate now it’s in rude wellbeing, savouring the form of accomplishment it has not tasted considering the fact that Ayrton Senna gained it a number of Components 1 titles, although also acquiring groundbreaking showroom cars this sort of as the Honda NSX in his spare time. What a person.

Wind forward 3 decades and the excellent occasions have returned. A Honda-driven F1 car gained the famous Monaco Grand Prix Max Verstappen, the person who drove it, sits atop the 2021 driver rankings forward of Lewis Hamilton and the Crimson Bull Racing Honda workforce is number one in the constructors’ desk.

It doesn’t get any improved than that for technically proficient, extremely modest, generally enigmatic Honda. Appropriate now it really should be screaming from the rooftops about its achievements. But I’m seeing and hearing up coming to almost nothing about it currently being again on top. Why not, at the incredibly minimum, mail ‘GOOD Plenty of FOR MAX TO Generate ON A SUNDAY… THEN Fantastic Plenty of FOR YOU TO Generate ON A MONDAY’ messages and visuals to latest and prospective Honda prospects?

Whilst on the subject matter of its highway cars, with the exception of the Honda e, the products and solutions just really don’t seem beautiful. The firm’s design route demands fixing, and who improved to do it than Julian Thomson, who is now accessible, having give up as design director at Jaguar?

Back to racing, and Honda has managed to hijack this October’s Suzuka F1 race, which is formally named the “Honda Japanese GP”. The firm could seal the manufacturer’s and driver’s championships there, just before pulling out of the sport a couple weeks afterwards. This it has promised to do, in the 12 months that it’s top the industry.

In the meantime, all around the weekend of the British GP in July, Honda will formally go away its Swindon manufacturing unit for a assortment of causes, like the sensitive simple fact that the Government did not subsidise it, as it did with Nissan’s plant in Sunderland. Also on the subject matter of Uk relations, way again when, Honda could’ve and should’ve taken Rover below its wing and aided it endure and expand. But Rover’s controversial sale to BMW set a end to that. 

I now worry that the Japanese firm’s growing ties with Common Motors in Detroit are acquiring far too near for comfort and ease. Some price tag-reducing, information-sharing and co-advancement of EV and self-driving tech is high-quality. But ‘partners’ is a word that is presently currently being used in some circles, and it anxieties me tremendously. Worse continue to, GM (or any other company huge) swooping in to successfully acquire more than a notoriously proud and impartial Honda would be a catastrophe.

Could GM acquire a a little bit dazed and bewildered Honda below its wing? Yup. Will it? For two incredibly strong causes, I hope and feel not. Very first, for the duration of the numerous occasions I frequented the famously conventional enterprise in Japan, I normally understood that, in its place of give up its independence, it would fairly self-sabotage than market-out and, in undertaking so, drop facial area.

Second, GM doesn’t specifically have a terrific record when adopting overseas makes – the likes of Daewoo and Saab will testify to that. Inspite of walking absent from Swindon up coming thirty day period, I wish Honda nicely. And I’m also wishing it doesn’t get far too near to Common Motors. 

Check out our in-depth seem at Honda’s new HR-V right here…