Honda plant to close

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Honda started selling electric cars more than two decades ago, with the INSIGHT reaching the UK 17 years ago.

You've also forgotten that Honda are also closing plants in Mexico and Turkey in order to move production back to Japan. It seems unlikely that Mexico is being closed because of Brexit, more likely that they're focussing on innovation and the truly massive increase in car ownership scheduled for China, India and South East Asia over the next two decades.

It's worth remembering that we have the highest level of employment since records began with over one million extra people in work since 2016, who kindly gave the Chancellor a completely unexpected extra £13 billion in taxes in the last tax year alone.



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The HONDA insight is a HYBRID which is different to an all electric vehicle [ EV] . I would reply to your other points also but since they stray once more into the political arena I will refrain. From a purely car marketing point of view I feel Honda's statement, which sees an abrupt change in attitude to Brexit from dire warning to denial has now taken on the different role of a pan European brand damage limitation exercise. Despite this I would expect that HONDA salerooms across Europe and especially in the UK to take on an even greater Marie Celeste aspect in the months ahead. :(
 
It wasn't meant to be taken literally, maybe humour doesn't come across well on the 'net.
Or perhap's your post was meant to be taken the same way? Who knows.

I know.

My response was humorous but now that I have had to explain it the joke is lost.
 
It's a funny one when a plant closes and all staff get to take the redundancy.

Some will be close enough to retirement to see redundancy at such a late stage in their career as a massive bonus.
 
It's a funny one when a plant closes and all staff get to take the redundancy.

Some will be close enough to retirement to see redundancy at such a late stage in their career as a massive bonus.

If you are working for a big company that is restructuring and have been there many years and are close to retirement and the pension scheme is sound - then yes maybe for some the situation works favourably.

Not so much fun if you are working for a smaller company - it staggers and falls - and you end up having lost several weeks pay and no generous redundancy package - instead having to claim statutory redundancy from the government - and possibly a pension fund that is not healthy.

I have come across a few people who have done really well out of these situations - typically working for large companies or pubic sector. But that's just a small minority. Conversely there are people in the middle of their careers who get totally messed up - even with a reasonably generous severance - and their lives change - including family circumstances.
 
If you are working for a big company that is restructuring and have been there many years and are close to retirement and the pension scheme is sound - then yes maybe for some the situation works favourably.

Not so much fun if you are working for a smaller company - it staggers and falls - and you end up having lost several weeks pay and no generous redundancy package - instead having to claim statutory redundancy from the government - and possibly a pension fund that is not healthy.

I have come across a few people who have done really well out of these situations - typically working for large companies or pubic sector. But that's just a small minority. Conversely there are people in the middle of their careers who get totally messed up - even with a reasonably generous severance - and their lives change - including family circumstances.

As always there are two sides to every coin, being of a sunny nature I see the silver lining.

The Honda jobs are not highly skilled, Swindon has below average unemployment rates and I would fully expect that the majority of these made redundant will either find a new job with relative ease or retire, in both scenarios they will trouser a healthy payment.

A very small minority will 'get totally messed up'.

Having worked in large firms for many years I have seen very many restructures, my wife has been at risk every Autumn for the last 8 years or so. I can't think of anyone who didn't go on to better things and that includes myself who has gratefully taken the cheque twice.
 
It's a funny one when a plant closes and all staff get to take the redundancy.
Nothing funny about being made redundant. Been there, done that twice and came close several other times during my working life. The redundancy payment is/can be a nice lump of money to have, though a lot depends on how the company calculate the numbers. In addition the redundancy process makes those all those affected feel pretty rubbish. Many need stress counselling or become clinically depressed.

some will be close enough to retirement to see redundancy at such a late stage in their career as a massive bonus.
Indeed, that can happen and if it does, well them's the breaks. All a bit different if you are in your 30's trying to raise a couple of kids and having to pay the mortgage etc..
 
Nothing funny about being made redundant. Been there, done that twice and came close several other times during my working life. The redundancy payment is/can be a nice lump of money to have, though a lot depends on how the company calculate the numbers. In addition the redundancy process makes those all those affected feel pretty rubbish. Many need stress counselling or become clinically depressed.


Indeed, that can happen and if it does, well them's the breaks. All a bit different if you are in your 30's trying to raise a couple of kids and having to pay the mortgage etc..

Funny as in odd, did you really think that I was laughing at them?

A tiny minority will need stress counselling or become clinically depressed, I am sure that the payments will be enhanced, a guy in his late 30s could have 20 years service and will do well out of it.

Those who need to work will find a new job.

I'm baffled by those who assume the worst, it's almost like you are revelling in the misery.
 
I'm not overly surprised their demand is down.

We bought a Jazz SE 1.4DSI CVT new in 2004 for just under £12k. We were looking at pre-facelift Sports purely because of the head airbags but for the same money, you could buy a new SE which then had head airbags fitted. Great service throughout.

It was a great car, served us well, cheap as chips to run and never went wrong apart from the battery Earth coming lose and the battery ultimately going which was fair enough. We sold it at 8 years old just in case that was the beginning of a run of things going wrong. I could understand why they were popular with old people!

Naturally we looked at the successor in 2012 but by then, they'd split the models out further from 3 to 5 or 6 I think and the exact replacement was nearly £18k. WTF? I know we were 8 years on but even so - for that money, we could buy a car in the next category up with more standard kit. Not to mention Honda's SatNav option was literally them selling you a portable unit and nothing was fitted in.

They seemed to be a bit lost... and their last Civic looked awful compared to previous models and the Type R looked like someone sat on a Transformer.
 
Funny as in odd, did you really think that I was laughing at them?

A tiny minority will need stress counselling or become clinically depressed, I am sure that the payments will be enhanced, a guy in his late 30s could have 20 years service and will do well out of it.

Those who need to work will find a new job.

I'm baffled by those who assume the worst, it's almost like you are revelling in the misery.
Being an Internet forum, I can only read what you write...

I hope you're right about the tiny minority and that Honda do enhance the payments, even though they are not obliged to do so. I also hope you're right that those that need to work will find suitable employment post-redundancy.

I can tell you from first hand experience, that the next two-years in the Swindon plant will pretty horrible for all concerned. You may well of course have a different view. C'est la vie!
 
Being an Internet forum, I can only read what you write...

I hope you're right about the tiny minority and that Honda do enhance the payments, even though they are not obliged to do so. I also hope you're right that those that need to work will find suitable employment post-redundancy.

I can tell you from first hand experience, that the next two-years in the Swindon plant will pretty horrible for all concerned. You may well of course have a different view. C'est la vie!

I wasn't aware that they had two years to closure.

I wouldn't mind betting that once the details are in place the workers will be allowed to take the cash and leave as soon as they have found a job, the smart ones will be looking for jobs shortly while their dimmer colleagues will be stringing it out until the end. Either way 3500 jobs over 2 years doesn't sound too bad eh?

I imagine that you did OK following your two redundancies? I did;)
 
Naturally we looked at the successor in 2012 but by then, they'd split the models out further from 3 to 5 or 6 I think and the exact replacement was nearly £18k. WTF? I know we were 8 years on but even so - for that money, we could buy a car in the next category up with more standard kit.

Was that £18K list? We bought one of our daughters (it was her choice) a Jazz EX (so that's the top-of-the-range one) in 2014 and with 5yrs service and warranty it was £13,500. An annoying thing is part of that was a £500 refund if we took the 0% PCP - I just wanted to pay outright for the car, but not so much that I'd walk away from £500!

That was the third Jazz we'd had in the family. I came very close to buying an Accord some years ago but had set my heart on an auto and they didn't do a diesel auto. If they'd bought HR-V out earlier we might have got one of those to replace wife's Jazz. Looked at CRV but it was just a little bigger than she wanted so she settled on VW Tiguan.

Never say never, but a big issue for us is there used to be two really good dealers locally. Honda shut them down and appointed a new one and the customer service there is terrible. Daughter won't take her car herself now, I have to take it.
 
I imagine that you did OK following your two redundancies? I did;)
Yeah, not too bad for me as it happens.
The first time was back in the 70's just after my apprenticeship. So the payment was modest, but nevertheless a welcome contribution to that first rung on the property ladder.

The second time was a few years ago and at a time when I could effectively take early retirement. But the three-years between the announcement of closure and the end-date was pretty horrid and at the time I had strong reasons for staying on to the end.

In between, several places I'd worked at closed a year or two after I'd left. Even at last the place I worked, we had to re-apply for our jobs several times over a period of about ten-years due to various 're-organisations' with some staff finding there were not enough chairs when the music stopped. At one time a whole department was outsourced under the TUPE regulations, they were effectively screwed over.

So much depends on where one is in life's journey, how transferable your skill set and education is and whether there are opportunities for similar employment/career elsewhere.
 
Yeah, not too bad for me as it happens.
The first time was back in the 70's just after my apprenticeship. So the payment was modest, but nevertheless a welcome contribution to that first rung on the property ladder.

The second time was a few years ago and at a time when I could effectively take early retirement. But the three-years between the announcement of closure and the end-date was pretty horrid and at the time I had strong reasons for staying on to the end.

In between, several places I'd worked at closed a year or two after I'd left. Even at last the place I worked, we had to re-apply for our jobs several times over a period of about ten-years due to various 're-organisations' with some staff finding there were not enough chairs when the music stopped. At one time a whole department was outsourced under the TUPE regulations, they were effectively screwed over.

So much depends on where one is in life's journey, how transferable your skill set and education is and whether there are opportunities for similar employment/career elsewhere.

Agreed.

That is why I made the point that the workers will not have been using a unique set of skills which could easily be transferred elsewhere, I also pointed out that Swindon has a particularly low unemployment rate.

Now I am aware that there's 2 years until closure I am more positive than before about the workers futures, particularly when I consider the fact that some will be lucky enough to take 20 years worth of redundancy when they could be close to retirement - and here we are back to my original point about the whole plant closing and some guys will be lucky enough to take the cheque whereas under a selection process they would be very unlikely to be granted such an opportunity.
 
Just picking up on some general points:

Honda is comfortably a World top ten car manufacturer, with a net work of $60 billion.

Honda sells five million cars a year, more than BMW and Mercedes combined.

Honda's highly profitable with an EBITDA of around 10% - not as good as the industry leader, BMW, but significant.

Its range may be "rubbish," to UK minds, but Americans love them, with the Civic being THE top selling car in the States (1 in five of which is produced in Swindon). Over 25 years, Honda won 75 top ten places in the US Car and Driver top ten list, three times that of its closest rival (BMW), consistently winning places with the Accord, Civic, Fit/Jazz, and the Prelude.
Car and Driver 10Best - Wikipedia

Worldwide production of cars has doubled these last twenty years and that's all driven by BRICS and RoW.

Future car industry growth is all BRICS and RoW.

Europe, North America and Japanese growth is insignificant, especially from the point of Profitability.

The key drivers for future success are powertrains & platform sharing, control systems & technology, digital delivery, and complexity (multiple market tailoring). These all point towards strong central control of innovation and strategy.

Consulting firms such as McKinsey, Ernst and Young, and BCG all publish strategy documents around the industry talking about the long-term challenges.
 
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^Good points, thanks.
 
Its hardly fair to compare the US and UK markets because they are completely different. Their range of cars produced in Honda's US 4+ production plants is vast compared to the UK with its current Civic hatchback and CRV 4x4.
As a trivial visual example
UK HONDA = Civic hatchback
1920px-Honda_Civic_1.6_i-DTEC_Elegance_%28IX%2C_Facelift%29_%E2%80%93_Frontansicht%2C_2._Mai_2015%2C_D%C3%BCsseldorf.jpg


USA HONDA = ACURA NSX
1280px-Detroit_NAIAS_2015_2016_Acura_NSX.JPG


It may simply be a timing thing as to when Honda historically entered the US market ?? In the UK Honda were always regarded as well engineered, worthy but often dull cars. They also appeared expensive in their natural mass market sector but at the same time failed to make vital inroads into the more expensive UK prestige sector occupied by Mercedes, BMW and AUDI. Bad marketing or bad timing they never seemed to take the European market seriously being very slow to produce their own diesel engine for example.
 
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Its hardly fair to compare the US and UK markets because they are completely different. Their range of cars produced in Honda's US 4+ production plants is vast compared to the UK with its current Civic hatchback and CRV 4x4.
As a trivial visual example
UK HONDA = Civic hatchback
1920px-Honda_Civic_1.6_i-DTEC_Elegance_%28IX%2C_Facelift%29_%E2%80%93_Frontansicht%2C_2._Mai_2015%2C_D%C3%BCsseldorf.jpg


USA HONDA = ACURA NSX
1280px-Detroit_NAIAS_2015_2016_Acura_NSX.JPG


It may simply be a timing thing as to when Honda historically entered the US market ?? In the UK Honda were always regarded as well engineered, worthy but often dull cars. They also appeared expensive in their natural mass market sector but at the same time failed to make vital inroads into the more expensive UK prestige sector occupied by Mercedes, BMW and AUDI. Bad marketing or bad timing they never seemed to take the European market seriously being very slow to produce their own diesel engine for example.

Honda NSX | Hybrid Supercars | Honda UK

This looks pretty nice though.

Appreciate that it might only be available in low numbers.
 
A rumour circulating for some time now that I've yet to see confirmed is that Honda's V6 F1 engine operates on HCCI principles. Does anyone know if this is true?
Mazda is to produce an HCCI engine and offer it in passenger cars (so was MB but Diesotto appears abandoned) but I don't understand why Honda would pursue HCCI ( a difficult technology to harness) in F1 (if true) if the plan for road cars is all electrification.
 
IMG_0798.jpg I liked the Honda Integra Type R DC5. Had one on our test fleet (like this one), it handled great and went along very well.
 

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