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Honda Aims to Boost Odyssey Model's Appeal by Ditching `Boxy' Minivan Look
Honda Motor Co. revamped last-year’s top-selling minivan in the U.S., the Odyssey, to compete with Toyota Motor Corp.’s Sienna and lure younger drivers from “crossover” light trucks that have eroded the segment’s sales.
The 2011 Odyssey goes on sale Sept. 30 with a new look and a base price of $27,800, or $1,000 more than the current version. Honda’s sales target for the model, designed in California and Ohio and built in Alabama, is 110,000 vehicles, said U.S. sales chief John Mendel. The model averaged 152,000 deliveries a year in the past five years.
“This stigma attached to the minivan as being boxy and not as appealing from a styling standpoint, we tried to address that,” Catalin Matei, Honda’s senior designer for the Odyssey, said in an interview in La Jolla, California. “We kept the functionality and increased interior volume. The appearance is lower, wider, more sporty.”
Honda, Japan’s second-largest carmaker, follows Toyota this year with new minivans aimed at reviving a segment that has shrunk for a decade, hit first by growth in sport-utility vehicle sales and more recently by crossovers such as General Motors Co.’s Traverse and Ford Motor Co.’s Flex, which blend wagon, SUV and minivan features. Reflecting that shift, the new Odyssey has a more aerodynamic, wagon-style shape.
Minivan sales tumbled from more than 1 million in 2005 to 415,173 last year, according to Autodata Corp. Sales for the segment are up 5.3 percent this year through August, with Chrysler LLC’s Town & Country outselling the Odyssey 78,492 to 71,584. The Odyssey was the best seller in 2009 and 2008.
Sales of Toyota’s Sienna, which was revamped in February and ranks fourth in the segment behind the Town & Country, the Odyssey and Chrysler’s Dodge Caravan, are up 17 percent.
Toyota’s Sienna
“Honda’s real competition is Sienna, in terms of the target customer, and Sienna is doing well since it’s the freshest model out there,” said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive officer of Edmunds.com, an auto industry data site in Santa Monica, California. “With Sienna and Odyssey both new, the minivan market should grow this year.”
The Odyssey had a 21.6 percent share of U.S. minivan sales through August, compared with 18 percent for the Sienna, according to Edmunds.com.
While sales of Honda’s new model may exceed the company’s target, “demand will be dictated by the strength of the truck market, fuel prices, the want for minivans,” Mendel said in an Aug. 24 interview. “I personally have much higher expectations for Odyssey.”
Fuel Economy
Fuel economy for the V-6 engine Odyssey improved to a combined 21 miles per gallon in city and highway driving for LX and EX grades, from 18 mpg previously, Honda said. Fuel economy for the Odyssey Touring grade, a high-end version that starts at $40,755, improved to a combined 22 mpg from 20 mpg, aided by the use of a 6-speed automatic transmission.
As many as 500,000 U.S. customers a year will keep buying minivans because of their flexibility and ability to meet family needs, said Edmunds.com’s Anwyl.
“Odyssey and Sienna have both taken on more of an expressive form, but people don’t buy them for the styling,” said Ed Kim, an analyst with industry researcher AutoPacific Inc. in Tustin, California. “They buy minivans because they’re functional and useful.”
Honda’s U.S. unit is based in Torrance, California.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net
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