Honda Won’t Quit on Sedans Like Accord and Civic As Rivals Shift to SUVs
Honda’s dealers still strongly want sedans on their lots, and Honda’s sales bigwigs agree that that’s the right call.
Though sedans have faded in popularity over the last couple decades, Honda hasn't given up on them. Instead, it thinks its rivals stepping out of the sedan ring is an opportunity, as multiple of its sales executives have revealed.
Sedans have lost significant market share to crossovers for many years now and have been largely, if not entirely, replaced by CUVs at some carmakers. Ford entirely abandoned the body style a few years back, and sedans aren't getting much investment from GM. This leaves their orphaned sedan customers with fewer alternatives to choose from—which funnels some of them toward Honda, as its assistant vice president of sales Lance Woelfer told Automotive News.
"I think while our competitors may have gone in a different direction, it creates more opportunity for us to meet that demand," said Woelfer, who added that dealers, "asked us to make sure that we continue to focus on those sedan segments, the Accord as well as the Civic."
Honda's sedan strategy thus entails continued development of the Civic and Accord, with a new Civic introduced in 2021 and a new generation of Accord entering production earlier this month. Honda reportedly anticipates its Accord hybrid will soon account for more than half of Accord sales and justify the introduction of a Civic hybrid reportedly planned for 2024. These volume models have struggled in recent years due to supply chain problems, though Honda expects them to drive a sales bounce-back in 2023 to the tune of more than 20%.
Woelfer's sedan optimism is mirrored by Honda's senior automotive sales vice president Mamadou Diallo, who said on a call last week that "sedans aren't as big as they once were, but they're big for us."
What role Honda's EV scheme sedans play remains unclear, though Honda's close alliance with GM opens the door to models shared between the two. GM was rumored to be planning a Chevy Malibu EV at one point, though a more recent report from GM Authority indicates the model will carry on with ICE power. In all likelihood, we're not about to see an Accord EV with lots of GM going on underneath, but it also wouldn't be a surprise at this point.
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