How Honda Rushed the 2013 Civic Redesign

Want to hear the behind-the-scenes story of what happened to the "failure" that the 2012 Honda Civic was? Well, Honda has finally released some of the details according to autonews.com. After reading the article, I was quite surprised on how the engineers over as Honda knew the 9th generation Civic was going to be bad, but were forced to release it and market it as best they could. In fact, the 2013 surprise redesign was already in progress before the 2012 Civic was initially released.

It seems as though it was bad timing for the guys over at Honda. The 9th generation was supposed to be released much earlier than it actually did, possibly as a 2011 model year. However, they thought the Civic was too overdone for its class, so then came the cost-cutting. Nobody knows what the original 9th gen was supposed to be. After recovering from rather hard economic times, the Japanese car company was once again hurt by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, most likely delaying the release even more.

So to sum it all up, something allowed the bad development to progress too far in order to be ditched. Here is a quick summary of the events as well as the full article.

Key Events

Spring 2009: Honda CEO Takanobu Ito orders decontenting of the 2012 Civic, delaying the scheduled fall 2010 launch by 6 months. 

April 2010: Initial internal reports indicate the final 2012 Civic redesign is inferior, but it's too late to make changes and delay the car again.

Summer 2010: Honda execs consider moving up Civic midcycle changes to fall 2012 from spring 2014.

Winter 2010: Short-cycling is approved and midcycle change work begins.

March 2011: 2012 Civic is unveiled to media; earthquake/tsunami devastate Japan.

April 2011: 2012 Civic goes on sale.

August 2011: Consumer Reports removes Civic from �recommended� list.

Fall 2011: Web traffic for Civic plummets.

October 2011: Honda discloses pull-ahead of Civic's midcycle changes.

Spring-summer 2012: Civic incentives soar.

November 2012: 2013 Civic debuts at Los Angeles Auto Show; sedan goes on sale.

Full article at:
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130107/OEM03/301079986/how-honda-hustled-to-redo-civic