What a great quote:  "American Honda Motor Manufacturing's marketing is
MIND-BLOWINGLY out of touch."  I will steal that, no question.  It needs
to be said early and often.

Remember the CRV?  It first showed up at the Detroit show in January
1997.  The story goes that Honda corporate came up with this car, and
offered it to everyone.  Japan was happy to take it, but American Honda
declined.

Then the permance of the SUV craze became very apparent, and American
Honda came back and said, "uh, guys, we'd like that car."  But by then
the corporate design was fairly well fixed and there was no
accommodation for the American market and its regulations, let alone
customer preferences and feature sets.

Therefore, there was a big delay while Honda sorted it all out.  When it
finally came to market, some big items were still awkward--the window
switches on the dash, the rear door swinging open the wrong way for
those of us who drive on the right side of the road, etc.

Now let's talk about American Honda and their beancounter engineering,
where they stuck the actual engineers on the bench and let the
beancounters make engineering decisions.  V6 transmissions, anyone?  In
one fell swoop Honda managed to turn itself into Chrysler, and the only
thing that saved them at the last minute was someone's decision to buy
their way out of it.  Unlike Chrysler (who denies any problems and tells
the customer to go screw himself), Honda decided to commit what some
shareholders would call coroporate hara-kiri and own up to the situation
and issue the largest recall ever for these things.

They're still paying out goodwill money for transmission replacements,
and will until the last of the early 04 Odysseys get turned into beaters
and get put into the hands of people who would never know to ask a Honda
dealer for assistance for the junk transmission.

American Honda spent at least 10 years dinging their reputation for all
the reasons you outline, and more--all based on the fact that they let
the beancounters run the system.

I did notice that the corporate CEO now is the brilliant engineer who,
back in the very early 70s, invented CVCC which allowed Honda not to
spend the money on catalytic converters while still achieving federal
emissions regulations.  This gives me great hope that engineering will
reign again at Honda.

Also giving me great hope is what they did with the 06 Civic.  It looks
like it's an engineer's car, MUCH more so than any Civic in the previous
10 years.

And look what happened with the Accord.  The 03 model comes out, and it
LOOKS like a Buick.  Blech.  Then a couple years later the same people
who let real engineers and designers loose on the Civic redesign, let
similar designers loose on the mid-cycle re-do of the Accord.  And in
one fell swoop, by fixing the rear end, the Accord became a nice looking
car.

And now the next gen Accord is going to look like what we've come to
expect from Acura, and nothing like what we've come to expect for
America's mainstream family car.

In fact, the fact that they showed the new Accord before it hit
showrooms in the fall--which is unprecedented for Honda--tells me it's a
new era at Honda.

Only Honda could slide to the Chrysler level, recognize their mistake,
and manage to come back.  That great feat alone should give one
confidence.

But my fear is that these changes are DESPITE the American Honda
marketing machine, not because of it.  I think the marketing team still
holds out for the Detroit syndrome, and could yet sabotage further Honda
efforts to be what we all know they can be--makers of the greatest cars
on the planet.

Honda, send out a press release that you've fired the entire marketing
team and all your ad agencies who have produced the last 10 years of
disasters, and have replaced them with people who know how to market
your engineering prowess (instead of telling the engineers what to
build) and turn that into 5% sales increases every month.  That'll tell
the world you're serious.