Automotive News: Acura to shift focus towards fuel efficiency, Honda may stretch product cycles

Mark Rechtin of Automotive News has two stories concerning Honda today. John Watts is (once again) a central figure in these stories. In the first story, Rechtin reports that Honda is looking at the possibility of stretching certain model cycles and quotes an analyst who says that the Accord would be a good possible candidate for an extended cycle, but it would be unlikely to see this happening to the Civic. Several months ago, we reported on tips we had received from anonymous sources claiming that the next generation Civic's introduction could be delayed by anywhere from 6 months to a year. Since then there have been several sources contradicting these claims, however. After reading the article at Automotive News, it's not really clear which direction Honda is really headed with this, as John Watts seems to make a number of arguments against the idea.

Link: Honda may stretch U.S. product cycles to cut global costs (subscription req'd)

The second story concerns Acura and how they are said to be shifting their focus away from performance and more towards fuel efficiency. John Watts mentions that the upcoming 2016 CAFE standards are proving to be very difficult to meet (side note: Honda was one of the few automakers who supported the very stringent standards), and that they see a much stronger (luxury) consumer focus on fuel efficiency when the market emerges from the current recession.

Link: Acura says it's putting fuel economy ahead of performance (subscription req'd)

Source;
http://www.vtec.net/news/news-item?news_item_id=847654