When GM started its own sub brand with Baojun Honda decided ‘
We too, can do that‘ and of course it went at its own plans. But with Honda having two partners in China that are both focused on passenger car production, where as GM has one focused on passenger cars with
SAIC and another focused on commercial vehicles with FAW. Honda’s partners at
Dongfeng-Honda and
Guangzhou-Honda both had plans for their own Honda based sub brands and by recycling Honda’s older platforms for customers that were not as aesthetically minded it seemed like a win-win situation for the joint venture partner and the customer, the partners would get access to IPR and the customer gets a world class car, albeit slightly more ‘mature’ for a Chinese price, Honda China could already hear the tills ringing.
Honda’s first sub brand came from their
Guangzhou Honda joint venture, the
Everus brand was launched at the
Guangzhou Auto Show in December 2010, the Chinese media were waiting with baited breath as to what the first
Everuswould look like – instead they got the old generation Honda City with a new epilepsy inducing badge glued to the front end. The
Everus S1 (aka the old City) has been on sale for a couple of months now, of course it does not yet have an independent dealership network and is sold through the
Guangzhou Honda network and has accumulated sales of 13,459 units to date and sold just under 1500 units in August alone, clearly early days but there is some traction there at least.
The second sub brand will come from
Dongfeng-Honda and is expected to be called Si Ming (思铭) in Chinese, or CIIMO in English – make sense? It does in Chinese, where the first character makes thoughts and Ming meaning an
inscribed motto. The badge of course looks very similar to
Dongfeng’s own badge with a few different strokes in there for good measure to mix things up, but the first car will be even more familiar; it’s the old Honda Civic with a minor face lift to keep it relevant. The new Honda Civic launched in China earlier this month at the Chengdu Auto Show and seems to be roughly on par with what was launched in the US last month, the hatchback version that was sold in Europe only until now is thought to in the works for China in mid to late 2012.
According to Chinese media reports the new old Civic will continue to use the old Civic’s 1.8L engine and 5 speed manual and automatic gearbox, pricing is hard to gauge in these early days but it could be somewhere in the 100,000 to 140,000rmb range.-chinacartimes.com
