patek007

...From the 'News Thread'... Nissan 350Z sports car, which was introduced in August 2002, has quickly become the best-selling sports car* in the United States, selling over 32,000 units (through June 2003) since launch and resenting over 25% of the sports car segment. ...

...Inasmuch as I 'bleed honda'... NICE JOB boys & girls in Acura Customer Service/Relations... as well as Marketing - you be 'this way' to your customers, and see how soon you will completely disintegrate the brand...
If I'd be their Sales VP, I'd be all over their asses as to WHY they have lost 32k of my sales!!!

mattg

i have faith that change is on the way. there has got to be something on the horizon to replace the cl-s.

but you're right, honda/acura is getting their ass kicked in the sports car market.

Crazy Bimmer

and lux sedan market.


The new RL better be hot.

patek007

Matt... it's not only the product... but Customer Service & Quality Control, especially to the most 'loyal' base that they are completely obliterating without even realizing... - unacceptable from the Luxury Brand...

The strangest thing is that imasmuch as Acura's Customer Service & quality is somewhat deteriorateing... @ Nissan's, at the same time, both are radically improving and rapidly I must say.

Crazy Bimmer

My acura dealer always has good customer service.

But i agree with the quality control has gone downhill with some of their makes. BUT RLs are still made pretty damn well.

IMO

mattg

i've experienced one dealership that pissed me off and one that takes good care of me. so yeah, i guess i understand what you're saying.


but realize that nissan is just coming out of a horrible slump of it's own. they knew they had to make some radical changes to survive and they're doing that.

honda/acura has been pretty comfortable, and that has lead to their complacency. i'm confident they are working on improvements of their own.

zeroday

not sure how you can assume if they didn't buy the z they'd have bought an acura...OR that it's a service problem and not a product problem....these numbers could have come out of many other car manufacturer's sales. i wish sales would slow down a bit though...dont want it to become the next mustang.

Nashua_Night_Hawk

There are quite few 350z on the used lot, why? Buyer Remose?

zeroday

haven't noticed this where I live. if that were true on a whole...that there are a disproportionate # of 350's for sale used because of dissatisfied owners...why would they be the #1 sports car in resale value right now? not saying you didn't see what you did, but it doesn't make sense- supply/demand.

most people love their z's...myself included...i never got into my cl as much as i have this car. get butterflies every time i drive it. best car i've ever owned, hands down.

Nashua_Night_Hawk

I would say there are as many used 350z as new 350z at the nearest Nissan delaer. Maybe quite few owners can't afford the 350z and a winter beater.. so decided to get something more 365 days/year car.

Also did Nissan resolve the tire uneven wear and rumbling nosie?

Marine1

Yeah!! What he said.

zeroday

dunno. my car doesnt have this problem...either does cusdaddy's or synth19's. i also noticed that when people replace the shitty potenzas that come standard with better tires and an alignment the problem seems to go away.

did acura ever resolve that tranny problem? sorry had to do it.

cusdaddy

You live in New Hampshire, so most likely a bunch of people fell in love with the styling/performance or whatever, then realized with the stock tires, the car is deadly in snow. Or I've seen a few people that realize they need the extra storage space and seats.

Some people don't think through their decisions, but overall it has very good resale value

Nashua_Night_Hawk

And.. I still love the 350Z... Maybe G35C is better choice ... Do not know.. the 350Z Coupe is excellent value. The Roadster is really nice too.. the S2000 is really a sports roadster that is a better value.

Soon the Mazda Turbo Miata MPS will get into the mix... choices are getting better.

I rank them like this:
G35 Best Luxo Sporty Coupe
350Z Best Roadster Luxo Roadster
350Z Best Value for a Sporty Coupe
S2000 Best Sporty and Value Coupe
Miata Turbo MPS Best intro Roadster

GreenMonster

It looks like (for now) that they don't really care about losing the battle of the affordable sports car market.

H/A has traditionally been a conservative automaker who has generally relied on it's ability to make affordable, reliable, and fuel effiecient, FWD vehicles. That's their bread and butter. Selling reliable ULEV's to soccer moms everywhere.

Affordable, reliable, and fuel effiecient FWD vehicles don't usually make for very good sportscars, and that's why alot of people were shocked when Acura came out with the 260hp CLS. Much like people were suprised when Porsche (who traditionally makes sportscars) introduced plans for a SUV (Cayenne). This is a sign that a carmaker is trying to change it's image, and tap into unexplored markets, so it's a good thing.

Before someone calls me on this one, I know that the S2000 is a RWD 2 seater sports car, but what it lacks is torque down low in the rpm band, which is something that traditional sportscars usually have in abundance. If H/A was to put a J32 V6 in a s2000 body, this would better fit the mold of a tradional sports car, but wouldn't fit the usual H/A characteristics of an affordable, reliable, and fuel effiecient vehicle (with smaller non-turbocharged engines). RWD and a V8 is not the "normal" platform for H/A products, so I wouldn't expect to see a RWD V8 vehicle from H/A anytime soon. That's just the way it is.

H/A has shown in the past that it is willing to put out a great affordable luxo sports coupe when it produced the 2nd gen CLS. The 2003 model was improved with the addition of LSD and a 6spd manual transmission.

They made some mistakes with the 2nd gen CLS which hampered it'smarketablity, but hopefully H/A has learned some important lessons. They probably should have offered the 6spd from day one of the 2nd gen, and handled the auto tranny problems better too.

H/A would have still gotten hammered by the car magazines for the car not being rwd, but most of the critic aggreed that the CLS w/ HLSD was the best FWD car they've ever driven.

It'll be interesting to see if Acura will re-enter the luxo sports coupe market to battle the G35c and BMW 3 series type vehicles. Although gran touring 2+2 coupes aren't usually big sellers, other automakers seem to be able to generate enough sales to keep 'em in the line up.

Shawn S may be right with his prediction in his signature about a "2007 AWD TL coupe w/ 300 hp", but only time will tell.

bigman

God i miss the days of Legend

Shawn S

I hope so…….Otherwise I’ll have to change that line to read:

Next car: Used BMW 6-Series & winter beater

Rock2534

that would be real nice. They started out ahead of the pack when they redesigned the CL for 2001, but have seemed to just sit contently with that as other models have caught up and surpassed them.

chef chris

Strictly from a financing perspective, I see a lot being traded out of for payment.

Example: Kid has a few tickets, gets approved for $30K car, coming out of a $20K car...begs, borrows, steals to get the downpayment...

Doesn't realize the insurance amount & that he still has to put gas in the car to drive it + eat + pay rent.

Ends up with a 2000 Golf with high mileage just so he can get out of the Z...

SilverCL225hp

I guess every auto company has its own brand image and characteristics, not every auto company has to produce every kind of vehicle. If you can buy a high torque high horsepower 350Z from Nissan, why do you have to buy the similar thing from Honda? That's why I really like the fact that S2000 is very different from 350Z. Give people more choice. Look at Camry and Accord, if every auto company makes something like these two cars(in fact, many have already) you would hope something very different come from other companies. Mazda has their own sports car - RX-8 - which again has different engine type from 350Z and S2000, and yet a very "fun" car. We got traditional high hp high torque two-seater from Nissan, we got high hp high rpm excellent handling roadster from Honda, we got rotor-engine RWD free-style-door coupe from Mazda, and we got turbo-charged four door from Mitsubishi and Subaru, see, we got many choices already, way more than five years ago. Now what I hope to see is something like a V8 or even V10 pure GT or super car from Toyota, since I really think Toyota is currently missing any kind of pure sports car, regardless of the price-range(Celica, MR2-Spyder, and SC430 are really not that "pure" in my opinion).

DivinDude

I for one will NOT be a 4th acura owner .. their falling customer serivce .. falling dealer service .. falling build quality are purely the reasons for my departing the acura brand when I decide to terminate my ownership of my CLS-6. The Acura of today is definately not the Acura that impressed me when I signed the papers of my '98 GSR (I imagine that some would say that acura had already started its freefall back then .. but it was still better than anything I've seen). Now, I know their "total quality commitment' is nothing but lipservce .. and isn't worth the paper it's written on.

As for the apparently failure of the CL .. well .. I think there are many elements .. first and foremost, their marketing research couldn't have been more wacked .. I don't really think they understood exactly what kind of car they had and buyer demographics. To build a near-lux sport coup .. and not offer a sub .. fogs .. body kits? That's NUTS. I hope some statistician is out flipping burgers for that major blunder. Unfortunately the only thing worse than their errored buyer demographics calculations is their ABSOLUTELY BORING commercials-talk about reason to change the channel before falling asleep?

I also believe that the tranny blunder and their horrible handling of it (including the fake '2%' figure that was as crooked as Enron's accounting - let's face it, that number was calculated by combining the Honda & Acura brands to significantly increase the number of in-service units - making the failure rate smaller - when the NHTSA was only interested in the much smaller number of in-service Acura units with the higher number of failures) hurt their relationships with current Acura owners (mine included). I know as an Acura owner who tells everyone that he knows that his car is going in for the 3rd transmission and they are blaming me carries a lot of weight in the buying public.

All of the bells and whistles on their new TL don't make it enough for me consider OR recommend this project .. due to the treatment I received early on in the transmission fiasco.

Some say that Acura is trying to "re-invent" themselves .. well .. my prediction is .. in 3 or 4 more years .. they'll be at it again and still scratching their heads as to why they can no longer be what they were 10 years ago.

As for me, I know there is no perfect car out there .. I'm not that stupid .. all brands/makes/models have their share of problems (just look at the TSB list at the NHTSA site) .. but Acura has proven to me that they are NOT interested in repeat business (I will reward them by buying elsewhere) .. and in my opinion until they learn that lesson .. they will always be the Chevy of the lux makers ....

lou_RENAMED

Shawn that 6 series is the most anticipated car as of yet

I foresee the 6 series to re-glamourize the sport luxury coupe segment like their 850 did...but much cheaper

It has all the qualities that make a sport coupe so alluring without going into the $100K

cusdaddy

I hope so. I do like the 6-series, and it's Bangle's only design which I really like, but I think it's still a little too controversial to attract a huge fan-base. When I was at the Detroit car show, I heard plenty of "ewww" and "horrid" comments from the crowd. It's only a small number of people, but shows you how divisive the design is.

lou_RENAMED

yea but BMW needs that segment cause it cant compete with Mercedes

CLk
CL

BMW

3 series

cusdaddy

You forgot to add the new MB CLS to that list. It's a 4 door but very close in style and purpose to the 6-series. Mercedes calls it "the alluring four-door CLS-Class Coupé".


BMW definitely needs this car.

lou_RENAMED

notice I didnt even bring up Acura they dont even have a coupe to bring to the table

shit even Honda does what are they thinking...If I was CEO of Acura I would have most of those engineer's heads and I'd send a lot of people packing

heyitsme

Here are the numbers

Model Units Sold 2003 Units Sold 2002
Nissan Z.............36,728........13,253
Chevy Corvette...27,974.........32,555
BMW Z4.............20,182........10,490*
Ford Thunderbird..18,100.......19,085
Mercedes SL.......13,318........13,717
Mazda RX-8........12,346........new
Mazda Miata.......10,920........14,392
Lexus SC430.......10,298........14,462
Porsche 911.........9,408........11,443
Honda S2000.......7,888..........9,684
Audi TT...............7,880.........9,513
Porsche Boxster....6,088.........9,875
Mercedes SLK.......6,023.........7,784
Chrysler Crossfire..4,021.........new
Toyota MR2.........2,934.........4,705
Jaguar XKr...........2,905.........3,935
Dodge Viper.........2,103.........1,511
Chevy SSR..........1,664..........new
Cadillac XLR.........875............new
Aston Martin........519............487
Acura NSX...........221............233

1SICKLEX

That many people bought Thunderbirds? I never see em.
The Vette is still strong after 6 years. Great work GM.
The Z is the cheapers just about, it better be the best selling.
They sold more 70k SC 430s than 35k S2000s!