Too Fast for their own good !

Disqualification in racing is a well known phenomenon. Disqualification happens when a racing team breaks the rules, either in the car design or during racing. But nowadays it seems that simply being too good (too fast) can also gets one disqualified. Team OakTek, a rally team from the U.K. has been barred from racing in their selected class in the U.K, Formula-1000 Rally Club events. And that is because the Honda Insight 1 they are racing is simply too fast for the rest of the field. Read the whole article from Autoweek in the link below::


http://www.autoweek.com/article/20110630/CARNEWS/110639984

HONDA MALAYSIA TO OPEN NEW WAREHOUSE IN SHAH ALAM

·      Honda Malaysia invests more than RM 50 million for a new warehouse, targeted to be completed by 2^nd quarter of 2012.

·      Honda Malaysia optimistic that the new warehouse will enable Honda to serve Malaysian customers more efficiently.

·      Strategic location of the new warehouse will ease the delivery process of spare parts to Honda dealers, especially in Klang Valley.

Read the entire press release after the jump

Shah Alam, 10 May 2011 – Honda Malaysia today held an official groundbreaking ceremony at the construction site of the new Honda warehouse. The new warehouse located at Industrial Bukit Jelutong, Shah Alam, will enable Honda to serve Malaysian customers more efficiently. Honda Malaysia has invested more than RM50 million on the new warehouse, which is expected to be operational by 2^nd quarter of 2012.

Speaking at the official groundbreaking ceremony of the new warehouse, Honda Malaysia Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Yoichiro Ueno said, “The Malaysian market has been very supportive of Honda and the opening of this new warehouse is in line with the continuous growth of the market in Malaysia. In the last three years, our sales volume has grown by approximately 12,000 units with a 1.4% increase in market share. Opening a new warehouse at a strategic location is a natural course of action as we constantly seek for ways to reduce cost and increase efficiency in order to serve our customers better.”

Mr. Ueno added that the location of the new warehouse was selected for its central and strategic location, and accessibility to most major highways in the Klang Valley. One of the key criteria was that it has to be a maximum of 30 minutes distance by truck to all major highways in Klang Valley. With this, Honda Malaysia will be able to shorten the delivery process of spare parts to its dealers. Currently, more than 60% of the deliveries are to the Klang Valley area.

“The new warehouse is a reflection of Honda’s commitment to the Malaysian market despite recent setbacks such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan which affected Honda as well. I am confident that the new warehouse will enable us to increase overall efficiency to cater to the needs of our valued customers as we strive towards achieving No. 1 in customer satisfaction,” added Mr. Ueno.

Globally, Honda has a commitment to make every effort to contribute to the preservation of the environment, in every phase of its corporate activity. This is also reflected in the design and building of the new warehouse in Shah Alam. The warehouse is designed to maximize natural lighting through skylight technology. With this in place, the usage of lights and electricity will be kept to a minimum, thus helping to save on electricity. Besides this, a Jack Roof is also integrated into the design of the new warehouse to help release hot air and improve ventilation. The Jack Roof design will help provide high indoor air quality and a comfortable working environment for Honda associates.

This 28,000 square feet warehouse will be built over three phases. When completed, the new warehouse, which is built on 12.4 acres of land in Bukit Jelutong, will cater to the storage of parts for the after sales market of Honda cars in Malaysia.

For more information, please log on to www.honda.com.my.

Production returning to normal - CONFIRMED

It is officially confirmed and it seems that it applies to worldwide. Honda's production capacity will be returning to normal by August this year. This makes it roughly 4 months only for Honda to recover, production wise, from the great Tohoku earthquake. The other important news is that Honda Malaysia has resumed the acceptance of orders for the Honda Insight hybrid as of today (June 1st), after stopping in April. Honda Malaysia will also be increasing production in August, in order to recover from the drop in production till August.

Read the full, official press statement from Honda Malaysia after the jump....


HONDA MALAYSIA ANNOUNCES FULL RECOVERY OF PRODUCTION BY AUGUST


Key points :
* Component parts supply from Japan is improving
* Honda Malaysia Increasing production units by operating additional hours on weekdays and Saturdays from 1st August 2011
* Taking of new bookings of Honda Insight resume on 1st June 2011 onwards.

Petaling Jaya, 1 June 2011 - Honda Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. today announced that the production at its Alor Gajah plant in Malacca would resume full output of two shifts on 1st August 2011. Besides resuming 100% production output, the plant would also try to increase production units by operating additional hours on weekdays and Saturdays to catch up with the shortage of supply from April through July.

Announcing the latest update, Honda Malaysia Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Yoichiro Ueno said, "Honda associates in Japan have worked tirelessly with our suppliers since the disaster in March to recover the supply of component parts from Japan. Hence, we are pleased to announce that we are able to resume full production much earlier than previously expected."

Mr. Ueno also added that the Company would resume the taking of new bookings of the Insight, Honda's new Hybrid model, from 1st June 2011 onwards. The taking of new bookings of Insight was suspended on 7th April 2011. Meanwhile, the booking for all other Honda models are not affected and can be placed at any authorised Honda dealers nationwide.

"On behalf of Honda, we would like to express our deepest appreciation to our valued customers and business partners for their support, patience and trust especially in the past two months since the disaster. We also apologise for the inconveniences caused during this period. We would like to assure all our customers that we remain committed to meeting the needs of our customers and to ensure their satisfaction," said Mr. Ueno.

Return to normal production in the near future ?

Recently here in Asia, there have been many reports of impending shortages of units from Honda dealers. In Malaysia, it is now difficult to find a dealer who is daring enough to take a booking for the Honda Insight for e.g. My own dealer is not committing on availability or delivery times for models like City and CR-V bookings made now. In fact, feedback I got from readers is that almost all dealers are preparing for the worst - lack of units to sell and deliver to customers and that trade in values have dropped and offers or discounts have disappeared as they prepare for tough times in the coming months. Their first priority is to ensure sales people can survive the period with greatly reduced sales. Certainly there is a danger of the best sales people running off to work for competitors, those continental makes who have not really been affected. The shortage is reportedly coming soon. So clearly the situation is now clearly a seller's market.

Questions to Honda Malaysia have received a more careful response. Production and delivery of cars will continue as normal until situation changes (which presumably would be when availability of critical parts get affected). But when ? That is not known at the moment. Delivery of the Insight for e.g. has been as per originally planned. However the Insight is a CBU from Japan (i.e. fully imported from Japan) from the Suzuka factory which as is known, definitely has been affected by the great earthquake. And Honda has officially reported a reduction of production capacity. So it is unrealistic to expect this situation to continue, meaning Insight delivery should logically be impacted in the coming months.

In our main site (Temple Of VTEC, catering for U.S. and Canada) however, there is good news. We have received and published a statement by AHM (American Honda Motors) that they expect to return to 100% production levels for most of the models by August of this year.

From my point of view, this is indicative of the situation for Asia as well and that the reported shortages above will hopefully be resolved in the very near future. For asia, our personal expectation is the situation to return to normal by the 4th quarter of this year, at the minimum for locally assembled (CKD) models. It may even be earlier as I know Honda has been working hard to locate alternate sources for critical parts for asia.

This is of course only a guess on our part. So if you are planning to buy a Honda now and are facing a lack of interest from dealers, it might be wise to hold off the purchase for later this year. When delivery returns to normal, dealers would be rushing to try to make up for lost sales and to try to meet their annual target as much as possible. Then it would become literally a buyers market.

Spy photo of 4th Generation CR-V

U.S. car magazine CAR & DRIVER has published a photo of the new (4th Gen) CR-V on their website. The photo was apparently taken by one of their readers and submitted to C&D. The link to the photo and its accompanying article (which does not say much actually) is below. The photo above was taken from the website (it has been re-sized, for the original photo, please visit the C&D website).

http://www.caranddriver.com/news/spied/11q2/2012_honda_cr-v_spy_photos-future_cars

The CR-V is one of Honda's global models and unlike models like the Civic and Accord, it is marketed worldwide in a single unified design. So expect the new Asian CR-Vs to have a similar design. So far there have been absolutely NO information about the new 4G CR-V. As for asia, expect the 4G CR-V to only debut at least 6months, if not later, then the U.S. launch which is apparently around the end of this year.