Jim, your letter reads as if you begrudge Honda ramping up production in 1991, when in fact I would put the blame squarely at Acura North America's door for not forecasting actual demand accurately, plus they gouged the North America market by demanding $30k over MRSP for some early cars - this, plus world market conditions, was what killed demand.
I think that Honda should be congratulated for continuing to invest in the NSX project post 1991, by coming up with the Type R, Type T, C32B engine and Type S, when the returns for doing so were very small. The production numbers are important, sure - '90 2548, '91 8422, '92 1272, and in '93 704, but the bubble in '91 was caused by Acura North America's forecast demand for cars, rather than Honda Japan trying to flood the market. Indeed the sales volumes back this up:
Japan '90 744, '91 3849, '92 702 , '93 528
North America '90 1275, '91 2193 , '92 1245 , '93 715.
Japan actually sold above their forecast demand in 1991, whereas North America just didn't deliver in Sales what the Acura Hype Machine dreamed it would do, for the reasons stated above.
Let's all hope that Acura North America don't over-do the hype for the next generation NSX.
The CEO of a company carries the overall responsbility for whatever occurs during his tenure at the helm regardless of what any particular part of the company did or did not achieve.
Acura USA is part of Honda and I'm sure they, as well as all other Honda subsidiaries globally, made sales forecasts for the NSX along with all the other models. Some subsidiaries sold their forecast for sure and I agree with you that Honda USA overestimated their market.
Regardless of the US subsidiaries performance, forecasting is difficult in any business and if real sales are falling short of forecast then well managed companies will reduce production to keep from building up unreasonable levels of working capital.
Perhaps the US division did not want to lose face by mssing sales targets and kept orders going to the factory. We'll not know what went on internally but too many NSX's came into North America unsold.
I bought my 91 in Vancouver at the MSRP in effect then and was placed on a wait list which was 6-8 months at the time.
Many early Canadian deliveries at MSRP were being flipped by brokers to the US market where, as you mentioned, cars were being sold at over MSRP by dealers.
When the inital flurry of sales in the US tapered off my waiting time went from 6-8 months to six weeks.
I recall being surprised at the dramatic change in wait times and shortly after I took delivery, reports of unsold NSX inventory in Long beach began to surface
It was clear at that time that supply has outstriped demand. So in the case of our NSX, Honda Corp did produce more cars than the market was able to take whether it was Honda USA or Honda Europe etc.
And certainly whatever exclusivity the NSX might have had in North America was lost at that time
I think the point I wanted to make is that in the market segment the NSX is positioned in, matching supply and demand is much more important
than say the market segment the Civic resides in.
Ferrari, Porsche, etc understand this principal well and do a good job of matching supply and demand and rarely overproduce. This keeps an air of exclusivity around the marques which is essential in a market segment that is totally a discretionary purchase.
I suspect the new car will come out around $135 K in the US and $145 K here in Canada. The last thing I want to see is the new NSX being overproduced again and reducing the value of the car.
By now I would have expected Honda Corp would have contacted current NSX owners globally and given them some acknowlegement or preference in the marketing of the new car. Because they haven't I wonder if they yet understand the NSX market segment
in any event Honda Corp gets a global redo on the new NSX and the message I hope Honda gets is to manage the marketing and supply mangment of the new one better than the old one.
Hopefully they can keep the NSX exclusive, keep a reasonable waitlist, set a price and keep the dealers from gouging, in short, market the car professionally.
Write a letter to Ito-san, it certainly can't hurt
Jim
