Honda Australia has plenty of new stock docking in the coming months, which should see backorders fulfilled and wait times slashed across the bulk of its line-up.
Speaking at the local media launch of the new 2024 CR-V, director for Honda Australia Carolyn McMahon said the volume the company expects for the short term is equivalent to a yearly rate of around 25,000 units.
“Many participants in the media have talked about Honda’s volume after we’ve gone to agency. We’ve mentioned a number of times [our current] volume has purely been because of supply – semiconductor, parts shortages,” Ms McMahon said.
“We have been working really hard with the factory and I think it was in about March when I said we expected more volume towards the latter half of this year – next month the ships are rolling in!”
“Lots of stock is coming November, December and January onwards. Whilst we’ve always said we aim to do about 20,000 units [annually] under the new agency model, the level of stock we have coming in the next three months is more towards the 25,000-unit level.”
“We’re actually able to pull forward and have a lot of stock come in over a shorter period of time, to fulfil backorders and and give people more choices. And that gives us the chance to run the new [business] model with no stock disruption.”
“At the moment there’s more stock coming back from within the industry, but what we’re looking to do is communicating through our 100 Honda Centres that stock is available, come and get something before Christmas. There will be very limited waiting times as we go forward,” Ms McMahon added.
When asked about more specific wait times per model line, Ms McMahon said the longest waits currently are for the Civic e:HEV and Type R, which at this stage have May 2024 arrival dates for new orders.
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Honda Civic
Ms McMahon said the wider Honda line-up is “between now and three months… based on our November arrivals. There’s plenty of stock around for Christmas presents,” Ms McMahon added.
To September 30, Honda has delivered 9924 units in Australia year to date, 10.3 per cent down on the same period in 2022. However, that’s been with the CR-V in runout for a number of months, and with other models severely supply restricted – or discontinued in the case of the once-popular Odyssey people mover.
Ms McMahon confirmed the new CR-V is also garnering a lot of interest and likely to drive a volume push, with 500 deposits taken within weeks of the September 1 on-sale date before even seeing the vehicle, with stock to ramp up over the next six months.
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