[krayzie]

Originally Posted by strat61caster

And even the most respected brands can turn out duds.

http://jalopnik.com/5826679/how-the-...first-to-worst

Explanation here:

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/...da-innovation/

Honda's popular Civic car was one of the casualties of these changes, according to the engineer in charge of the model's redesign beginning in 2007. With a reputation for outstanding engineering, reliability and affordability, the Civic was one of Honda's top selling cars.

「Right from the get-go, the program was about making cost savings in real terms,」 the chief engineer for the redesign, Mitsuru Horikoshi, told Reuters.

To that end the global automotive business unit, headed at the time by future CEO Ito, and the tech division decided that the redesigned Civic would use many of the same components and systems as the previous model, including the front and rear suspension systems and the front section of the car.

Civic engineer Horikoshi had finished a first design setting down the basic engineering points by February 2008 and a more detailed design by April. When rising gasoline, steel and other prices pushed up manufacturing costs by between $1,200 and $1,400 per vehicle, Horikoshi's team refined their design to improve the car's fuel economy. In early July 2008 they sought management approval for their plan at a meeting in Torrance, California, Honda's U.S. sales headquarters.

Global automotive head Ito said he would review the design overnight, Horikoshi recalled. The next morning, Ito came back and told the team to make the car smaller and cheaper to produce, and complete the redesign by the end of that month.

「With one blow of a cost chopping knife, Ito basically told us to take our design back」 to the first plan. 「It's just unheard of. It was unprecedented,」 Horikoshi said.

To meet Ito's specifications, Horikoshi used cheaper materials and made the car smaller, cutting its length by 45 millimeters and its width by 25 millimeters. He also reduced the wheelbase, the distance between the front and rear axle, by 30 millimeters.

A former leader of Honda's R&D unit said the firm 「lapsed deeper into a bunker mentality, and that translated into our products. It was cut, cut, cut, and it cheapened our cars.」

By the end of 2008, Horikoshi's team was wrapping up the Civic design. Half a year behind schedule, they were still $200 short of the cost target per car.

「I already had my pants down to my ankles – nothing more to shed,」 Horikoshi said.

When the 2012 model year Civic went on sale in 2011, it was met with a barrage of criticism. Influential U.S. magazine Consumer Reports dropped the car from its recommended list for the first time since it began rating vehicles in 1993. It criticized the new Civic for a poor quality interior and uneven ride.

R&D chief Matsumoto said the episode is a lesson that creativity should not be sacrificed on the altar of shareholder value. During previous assignments for Honda in Thailand and India, Matsumoto said he had looked at headquarters from afar and recognized a lack of creativity there.

「We have to be allowed to go wild at times. If you operated a technology center only from an efficiency perspective, you'd kill the place. Which is exactly what happened at Honda. We don't want headquarters people telling engineers what to do,」 he said.