Acura Looks To New Year For Refreshed Lineup and Sales
Acura closed the year on a sour sales note with the new year resolution to move on with their brand despite most car companies being on the rebound.
This year, Acura fans and new customers alike can look forward to a refreshed and redesigned Acura, less focused on competing with the luxury segment and more focused on a mid-market segment between what Honda already offers and the premium car market. So why the change?
The Acura MDX only sold 4,588 units this year, down more than 22 percent over last year. Total sales also dropped eight percent, marking a bad year for the brand.
Honda has often been criticized for stepping too closely within their comfort zone with the Acura variations on their cars, as many owners felt like they were driving slightly fancier Civics.
That doesn’t mean the horse is ready for the glue factory just yet, though. Honda has a plan to make Acura more competitive, including a new NSX, set to debut at next week’s North American International Auto Show.
While supercars are nice, they have never sold in high volume and can’t come close to rescuing a lame duck brand. However, writing Acura off as a lame duck, despite comparatively poor sales, is probably rash. The company plans to debut a line of totally redesigned cars starting this spring in an effort to rethink the brand.
“Acura will start off 2012 strong with the debut of three all-new products at the North American International Auto Show. Although we still had low inventory in December, our production levels are now back to normal. With a great line-up of products and all-new ILX and RDX models coming in the spring, 2012 will be a very good year for Acura,” said an Acura representative.
Stay in touch with us next week as we unveil more details about Acura’s new models and their plan for the coming year.
Luke is an energetic automotive journalist who spends his time covering industry news and crawling the internet for the latest breaking story. When he isn't in the office, Luke can be found obsessively browsing used car listings, drinking scotch at his favorite bar and dreaming of what to drive next, though the list grows a lot faster than his bank account. He's always on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> looking for a good car conversation. Find Luke on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> and <A title="Luke on Google+" href="http://plus.google.com/112531385961538774338?rel=author">Google+</A>.
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Slight mistake, the MDX sold 4,588 in the month of Dec - not the whole year. It sold 43,271 for the year. Acura still falls in mid-pack of luxury sales so altho not great, it is not horrible either. Hopefully they will be able to reinvent themselves as it is definitely needed.