If Honda Makes Such a Reliable Car, Why is the Warranty Period RelativelyShort?

Honda (and Toyota) sell a lot of cars thanks to an image (popularized by
the media) of making ultra-reliable vehicles.

Why then doesn't Honda give at least a 5 year, 75k mile warranty for all
items outside of normal wear (tires, brakes, etc.)??????

The simple answer is that Honda doesn't do so because they feel it would
cost them too much money and that competitive pressures don't require it.

Well, Hyundai is cranking up the competitive pressure big time.
Hyundai has gone from having some of the worst JD Power ratings to
having some of the best.

I believe that one big reason for this is that Hyundai's long warranty
period puts the cost of engineering and manufacturing shortcomings back
onto Hyundai instead of fobbing them off on the customers. Now Hyundai
is highly incentivized to get-it-right-the-first-time instead of paying
the much higher cost of fixing problems in the field.

Even much maligned GM is starting to get the picture and just bumped
Buick's warranty up to 4 years/50k miles.

John

 

Look at resale values! Hyundai has a ways to go before their resale values
improve....and added to that they are having to throw all kinds of
incentives to sell Elantras for $9995 or Accents for $7995. The cheapest
Honda Civic sells for the low $13's copmparably equipped...with no rebates
and incentives other than intererest rate reductions. I do think Hyundai
has improved quality quite a bit.....but they are no Honda or Toyota yet.
Honda needs no improvement on their warranty, since they rarely break. I
own 2 of them (CR-V and an Element) and have owned 3 others (2 Civics and an
Accord) and all have been or were flawless.

 

Circular logic Larry. If they rarely break, then it should be a
no-brainer for Honda to increase the warranty period. That way the
"rare" cases where something which should not go wrong does in fact go
wrong, the company gets the cost instead of the unlucky customer.

My Honda is in getting a new transmission under warranty, and I just
barely made it under the wire at 35,000 miles.

Your reasoning does not hold up.

John

 

Honda is selling a reputation, not a warrantee. Why give a warrantee if
it is not demanded by the consumer? When people stop paying top dollar
Hondas, then maybe they'll sweeten the deal. Sounds like maybe you
should invest in the company.
B.

 

I simpathize with your issues for sure. Maybe you have had other Hondas
maybe not. Counting my family, my parents, parents in law, sister in law,
brother in law, nieces, and best friend, a total of 17 Honda/Acura cars have
been owned over the years and not a one has been a problem child or had a
serious issue such as yours. Granted, somebody is bound to have a major
problem, but we haven't, so my opinion is skewed. Some of these cars are as
old as 15 yrs old with 140,000 miles and they run strong and durable, so I
see no need for Honda to lengthen the warranty myself....and sales figures
also back that up. Thats what the purchase of an extended warranty is
for.....which I'd be doing if I owned your car given its problem. I'll
agree to disagree with you, based upon our different sets of experience
here. Just my opinion from a very satisfied owner.

 

They do for their problematic automatic transmissions.

No, it's because they don't NEED to. Warranties are part public relations
and part damage control. Ever heard of a car company called NSU? Warranty
claims on the Ro-80's rotary engine sank them, and NSU was exceedingly
generous with warranty claims. They HAD to be: word-of-mouth advertising
was negative in the extreme, leading to plummetting sales. Eventually VW
picked up NSU cheap.

NSU's last project became Volkswagen's first water-cooled car, the K70.
Compare the NSU Ro-80 and the VW K70 and the family resemblance is quite
obvious.
http://users.du.se/~it95nka/history.html

We'll see if that holds up past the JD Power 100-day period. No evidence of
that yet...

 

make that "current" problematic auto transmissions. the late 80's/90's
ones were virtually indestructible.

 

A long warranty is a blessing and a curse. For example, my future
daughter-in-law recently bought a Kia. It has a 100K mile warranty... as
long as the required maintenance is kept up. That includes a 3000 mile
service interval, meaning she will pay for 33 required services to maintain
the warranty. When the car was one year old, she had already paid over $3000
for non-warranty service, including a set of brakes. In fact, her first year
non-warranty maintenance costs exceeded her car payments.

My wife has a Toyota Prius, which had a 3yr/36Kmile warranty that has
expired. It has a slightly longer power train warranty and a 8yr/100Kmile
hybrid system warranty. Including the 5 initial 7.5Kmile services that were
free under a promotion and the two I've done myself, we have spent under
$300 on maintenance in 2 1/2 years... mostly for a cracked windshield.

As somebody who never buys "extended warranty" service policies, I'm quite
happy to be given the choice instead of having it decided for me. After all,
I tell the salesmen, I wouldn't buy something if I expected it to give
trouble as soon as the manufacturer warranty ran out.

Mike

 

Maybe you should be addressing your concerns to American Honda. Here in
Canada, Honda vehicles are covered for 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles).

Brian

 

Here in Canada, the powertrain only is warranted for 100,00
kilometres. Most everything else is 60,000 kilometres or 3 years.