The power of 800...

Two stories featuring the number 800, revealed within hours of each other. There can be no clearer indication of what’s going right and wrong with brands who participate in the car industry in the UK (as opposed to the UK car industry, which is virtually non-existent). Eight hundred jobs lost at Honda, a company which has struggled in the last few years through problems it could do nothing about, such as the Japanese earthquake and flooding in Thailand which both affected its factories badly. But it’s also been crippled by its own decisions, such as the almost total absence of creative vision behind the door marked Future Product. For the UK, it has a supermini, a C-segment hatchback, a D-segment saloon/estate, a big SUV and a couple of hybrids which aren’t exactly flying out of showrooms. That’s a product line-up from 15 years ago. Honda desperately needs B and C-segment crossovers, a small SUV, a small estate car, a couple of people carriers (where was the replacement for the FR-V?), a sports car or three and something to fit below the Jazz. Are they on the way? In the required volume, no. If I was a Honda dealer I'd be worried. Contrast all that with Jaguar Land Rover, riding a wave of critically acclaimed products that’s seen record sales and the promising of more with the F-Type on the way. Eight hundred new jobs means in the last two years it’s taken on 8,000 new employees. Read that sentence again. Genuinely staggering.