ralco
02-02-2003, 03:18 PM
found this read at another board.
The Toronto Star
Ontario
I had an interesting conversation in the back of an Acura TSX recently with Anton Yewchyn-Pawczuk, one of the company's young product planners.
We'd just spent the afternoon bombing around some California canyon roads and Anton had his notebook out, asking not only if the TSX was a legitimate competitor to the likes of 3 Series BMWs and Audi A4s, but also whether the Acura brand was strong enough to measure up to, among others, those vaunted German brands. Was it different enough from Honda? Where does brand strength come from? How does Acura get there?
My short answers: not quite, and, for the others, I don't quite know. Acuras are great cars, I was more than willing to admit, but they still seemed pretty Honda-ish to me, not sufficiently different from the cars their parent company produces to stand truly apart as different products. People buy Acuras because they're the intelligent choice, offering an astute balance of performance, luxury and practicality. People buy BMWs and Audis and Mercedes simply because they want them.
The other rider in our car, Michael La Fave, associate editor of World Of Wheels magazine, voiced the opinion that the reputations of BMW and, to a lesser extent, Audi, were forged from ideologies that the corporations had been founded on and had been built upon.
Acura is a relatively new brand, just over 15 years old. It simply doesn't have the pedigree of these older marques and was founded on very different principles: American Honda saw a great opportunity to launch a luxury brand and make some great money. Acura's creation wasn't driven by one person's or team's passion to introduce something unique in the marketplace.
Ultimately, a brand's image hinges on its products. BMW was a car before it was a brand - the first BMW drivers had to make a leap of faith to invest in a product that was, for its time, an unknown quantity.
People buy BMWs today based on the company's reputation. In a recent Maritz survey, people cited that and styling as the primary reasons for purchasing one. That reputation derived directly from a unique and tangibly different product.
This may explain why Audis, brilliant as they are, don't quite yet have the same cachet as cars with propellers or three-pointed stars on their hoods. They do still share some engineering and some physical pieces with Volkswagens, much the same as Acuras do with Hondas.
We got cynical for a bit and wondered whether the prestige brands, knowing that they could sell on reputation alone, shouldn't get a bit complacent - the cars are already so good and most car buyers (including you and me) will put up with a lot to drive one every day - and just coast on their image alone. But such a strategy would only work for so long. With new buyers constantly entering the market and older buyers leaving it for greener pastures, there's never any room for complacency.
Because there always comes a time when someone starts looking for a car, and they're not familiar with a brand's reputation and can only judge it on the quality of the product placed in front of them.
Cadillac, long the "Standard of the World," discovered this in the 1980s when all it had to offer were old-fashioned tanks and a reskinned Cavalier called Cimarron. It's only now that, with technologically and stylistically advanced cars like the CTS and SRX, it's finding its footing once again, and leading rather than following.
In the end, it's innovation that's the hallmark of great automotive brands (and, indeed, great non-automotive brands). BMW's kept its leading-edge image because it builds leading-edge products: check out the technological wonderment of the 7 Series sedan, or the sharp-edged styling of the Z4.
Infiniti, after years of floundering in the shadow of Toyota's Lexus division, finally outsold its chief rivals last year thanks to the avant-garde G35, a car that trounces its competition by making almost everything else feel old hat. And Mercedes is pushing itself to ever-greater sales heights with a combination of high tech and safety features and magic-slipper styling.
All of this is good news for Acura. Because if, as it says, the TSX will become the blueprint for the rest of the marque's cars to come, it means that in a few years there will be people entering the market with no Acura baggage, people who will judge the TSX and its ilk on their merits alone. On first blush, they'll probably think the cars are fantastic.
So if the collective public's memory is anything as bad as my own, Anton shouldn't have too much to worry about.
Laurance Yap can be reached at yap @ mac.com.
The Toronto Star
Ontario
I had an interesting conversation in the back of an Acura TSX recently with Anton Yewchyn-Pawczuk, one of the company's young product planners.
We'd just spent the afternoon bombing around some California canyon roads and Anton had his notebook out, asking not only if the TSX was a legitimate competitor to the likes of 3 Series BMWs and Audi A4s, but also whether the Acura brand was strong enough to measure up to, among others, those vaunted German brands. Was it different enough from Honda? Where does brand strength come from? How does Acura get there?
My short answers: not quite, and, for the others, I don't quite know. Acuras are great cars, I was more than willing to admit, but they still seemed pretty Honda-ish to me, not sufficiently different from the cars their parent company produces to stand truly apart as different products. People buy Acuras because they're the intelligent choice, offering an astute balance of performance, luxury and practicality. People buy BMWs and Audis and Mercedes simply because they want them.
The other rider in our car, Michael La Fave, associate editor of World Of Wheels magazine, voiced the opinion that the reputations of BMW and, to a lesser extent, Audi, were forged from ideologies that the corporations had been founded on and had been built upon.
Acura is a relatively new brand, just over 15 years old. It simply doesn't have the pedigree of these older marques and was founded on very different principles: American Honda saw a great opportunity to launch a luxury brand and make some great money. Acura's creation wasn't driven by one person's or team's passion to introduce something unique in the marketplace.
Ultimately, a brand's image hinges on its products. BMW was a car before it was a brand - the first BMW drivers had to make a leap of faith to invest in a product that was, for its time, an unknown quantity.
People buy BMWs today based on the company's reputation. In a recent Maritz survey, people cited that and styling as the primary reasons for purchasing one. That reputation derived directly from a unique and tangibly different product.
This may explain why Audis, brilliant as they are, don't quite yet have the same cachet as cars with propellers or three-pointed stars on their hoods. They do still share some engineering and some physical pieces with Volkswagens, much the same as Acuras do with Hondas.
We got cynical for a bit and wondered whether the prestige brands, knowing that they could sell on reputation alone, shouldn't get a bit complacent - the cars are already so good and most car buyers (including you and me) will put up with a lot to drive one every day - and just coast on their image alone. But such a strategy would only work for so long. With new buyers constantly entering the market and older buyers leaving it for greener pastures, there's never any room for complacency.
Because there always comes a time when someone starts looking for a car, and they're not familiar with a brand's reputation and can only judge it on the quality of the product placed in front of them.
Cadillac, long the "Standard of the World," discovered this in the 1980s when all it had to offer were old-fashioned tanks and a reskinned Cavalier called Cimarron. It's only now that, with technologically and stylistically advanced cars like the CTS and SRX, it's finding its footing once again, and leading rather than following.
In the end, it's innovation that's the hallmark of great automotive brands (and, indeed, great non-automotive brands). BMW's kept its leading-edge image because it builds leading-edge products: check out the technological wonderment of the 7 Series sedan, or the sharp-edged styling of the Z4.
Infiniti, after years of floundering in the shadow of Toyota's Lexus division, finally outsold its chief rivals last year thanks to the avant-garde G35, a car that trounces its competition by making almost everything else feel old hat. And Mercedes is pushing itself to ever-greater sales heights with a combination of high tech and safety features and magic-slipper styling.
All of this is good news for Acura. Because if, as it says, the TSX will become the blueprint for the rest of the marque's cars to come, it means that in a few years there will be people entering the market with no Acura baggage, people who will judge the TSX and its ilk on their merits alone. On first blush, they'll probably think the cars are fantastic.
So if the collective public's memory is anything as bad as my own, Anton shouldn't have too much to worry about.
Laurance Yap can be reached at yap @ mac.com.