In a pleasantly surprising development, it has emerged that Honda could soon launch Acura, its luxury brand, in India.
Hironori Kanayama, President, Honda Cars India, recently told Autocar India,“We are not concentrating on premium cars at the moment. But once this segment starts to grow and mature, Honda will consider bringing its luxury brand Acura here.”
Honda feels that the premium car market is fast growing in the country and there sure lies a lot of unexplored potential for the carmaker in segments above that of the Accord.
It may be noted that while luxury car markers are surely having a good time in our car market, there lie challenges such as having to bring the vehicles through the CBU route, which make the entire business quite unfeasible. Also, low volumes don’t really justify high initial investment for CKD assembly plant.
These are the same reasons which have prevented Toyota from bringing Lexus, its luxury car brand, to India. It seems that these reasons are also keeping away Nissan from bringing the Infiniti car brand to our country.
It would be interesting to see if Honda decides to bring the Acura brand of cars here.