I finally got a call from the dealer today. Not good news. Apparently last week Honda UK told them my IMA wouldn't arrive until February. He delayed telling me for a week while he argued my case. The result is that Honda now say November. Perhaps.

Basically as I suspected it's because the US market is going well and they aren't interested in the EU..or at least not the UK bit of it anyway.

So there you have it. One very happy customer for nearly ten years and now I'm pissed off. Good one Honda.

 

Any chance you just got bumped? If the same thing happened here I would suspect that.

 

That's hard to say. I don't think it's bumping from someone else at the dealership though. My dealer seemed equally annoyed and didn't try to dissuade me from taking it up with Honda.

If there is bumpage I think it'll just be that of the handful of Hybrids Honda deigns to send here most will go to London. I suppose I could go there and ask around but I'm a little too annoyed right now plus it's a lot of hassle going into London to pick a car up.

I don't blame Honda for the decision. Its a commercial choice and probably backed up by sound market research and costings. I do blame them for leaving me (and apparently the dealer) hanging on waiting for a delivery date. The order went to Honda in May and it's taken them until now to decide (or come clean?) that they can't make August and only might be able to make November.

 

This morning I phoned round five dealers and got the same story. They all said that they had had to phone between half a dozen and a dozen people and tell them their order had been delayed. If every Honda dealer in the UK is having to do that it presumably affects many hundreds if not over a thousand customers.

Probably something like £20 million worth of business. I bet some of those customers will just go to Toyota instead.

Not very clever it seems to me.

 

Why would H stiff the UK guys? Is it more profitable to ship to the US? It's less distance........ There's probably a lot of factors coming into play but maybe they don't want to lose ground to Toyota in the US by not being able to fulfill orders.

One thing is over in the UK you get the sporty Civic hatchback and it's not available here yet.

 

I think it would be a combination of factors.

* 1% market penetration in the UK is far fewer vehicles than 1% in the US. OTOH as I understand it the markup is higher here (£18k for the Hybrid which is normally around $30k).

* Design. Apparently I'm a bit weird (as a European) in not really liking the hatchback concept. A lot of reviewers criticised the Hybrid because it was a saloon.

* Most Honda cars (probably 99% of the sales) are built in the UK. It isn't to Honda UK's advantage to fight too hard for the Hybrid.

* UK vehicles have to be right hand drive

Basically a lot of hassle to build a car for a small market normally serviced by home grown units.

As for the sporty hatchback - meh. I prefer the design of the Hybrid. The flashy hatchback is too fussy inside and the pricing is poor. Not to say that the car isn't worth the price but as a replacement for my three year old Civic it's too expensive. I'll pay 25% extra for the CVT and Hybrid technology but I'm not paying 25% extra just to get a car that's a bit younger. It's not like a three year old Civic is going to fall apart anyway. Probably better quality than a lot of other manufacturer's cars at new

 

The only thing I can think of is that someone at Honda seriously messed up somewhere and is probably getting fired. If there's some delay that's affecting the entire UK market like that, possibly the EU, then that can't be good. If they aren't simply rerouting the cars to London but have fewer cars available or big delays in the arrival of a specific set of cars, then someone in the company is in big trouble.