Re: New JDM Honda CM feats NSX 2.0 (+ English subs)
(Score: 1, Normal)
04-21-2012 13:39
Midi_Amp wrote:
danielgr wrote: Well, I just made a versión adding english subtitles, so that you can watch it the way it's meant to be watched.
Thanks! Much appreciated.
That sentence about one tries something new, made a blunder and gets angry is hilarious, kind of what's happening here at TOV.
Still don't know what the ad meant though... The cars selected are what I considered as Honda's breakthrough products, but after NSX and Beat, it's just random. No S2000 or the Type-Rs, no Insight 2.0 even, after the 1st gen Fit, then boom came the NSX 2.0. The narrative is hella gloom also... "usually justice doesn't win"? Not exactly Sunday morning cartoon advertisement tone and I thought those tokusatsu heroes (did I say that right?) always talks about justice will prevail and what not.
I don't think there are any random choices in there, and everything was well thought. If you think about it:
1)The S2000 as a concept is just a sequel to the previous S series, so it wasn't braking any new ground, simply a modern re-interpretation. The engine, etc. was again simply "pushing the boundaries of what Honda introduced in the NSX", which is their performance DOHC-VTEC stuff. Sure it was the "culmination" of many things Honda (basically the 90's decade), but certainly broke not new ground. The same can be said of every single typeR to date...
2)The 2nd gen Insight was certainly a highlight in Honda history (their first hybrid designed to grab mass-appeal, first ever hybrid to top the sales charts in Japan, etc.) yet again it represented no major breakthrough, simple the culmination of the 1st gen IMA tech which was introduced with the 1st gen Insight.
The logic keeps going, but there is a reason why the RA272 is there (the car that brought Honda's first F1 victory) and not any of the multiple-title winning cars that Senna drove.
The ad is not about engineering excellence, it's not about Honda's greatest products either, the car is about "trying something new", "pushing the boundaries of imagination", it's about pursuing "real dreams", which have to be "about the unthinkable", not simply about "making the same thing better".
And that speaks for Honda's evolution since their first days, and for how much imho most people here misunderstand the company, keep asking for more of the same, again and again, simply because 20 years ago Honda's way of "thinking out of the box" captured their "dreams" at the time they were "young enough to dream about stuff that the usual American maker couldn't offer".
Now they've grown old, like their parents before them, and they just keep asking for their good old formula (the one that made them love Honda 20 years ago) to be refined indefinitely, just like their parents may have wanted their American muscle cars to be refined for ever.
For Honda to be alive, they do not need to keep doing sports-cars like they did in the 90's (but obviously better), they need to rediscover them like they did at the time, they need to fulfill the dreams of the younger guys coming down the pipe.
Personally, during the Fukui era I was very worried, and I wrote it countless times, and I was worried because I could see Honda growing mature, getting old, having stopped trying to challenge themselves and seemingly satisfied with doing the same thing over and over, adhering to the rest of the world good old formulas (like the paradigm of a big V8/V10 engine with an RWD platform), and even like the "Insight 2.0" mirroring the Prius...
The crisis though was a huge wake-up call, ever since Honda is imho fighting back to be Honda again, and I couldn't be happier about it. And yes, right after past year I did buy my first ever stock-shares, they were Honda's and they symbolized both my support during hard times for the one corporation I admire in this world (and the people working there), and my confidence that despite what the market thought they were right on the good path. I'm not planning to sell anytime soon, but I sure hope they don't disappoint me (and I'm not thinking about their stock-price...)
PS: And really, to fully understand what's so exceptional about this ad, and about Honda's way in Japan in general, you have to know Japanese people. You need to feel how extremely difficult it is for Japanese people to "think out of the box", to admit that "failure is a necessary step towards progress", that "no one can get something new right on the first attempt, but that it is still worthy to keep trying".
Imho what makes Honda such an special company is that they ally two seemingly irreconcilable qualities: Japanese passion for perfection and craftsmanship with western appetite for risk and innovation. That is probably the reason why no competitor (either in the same field or in a different one) likes Honda, neither in Japan nor abroad, why they form no alliances, and why they'll never get any favor from anyone. They simply can't fit anywhere, and that makes everyone else feel uncomfortable.
Now, I've personally come a long way from my early attraction to the company based on a car like the NSX and their victories powering my youth hero (a young Brazilian called A. Senna), and it may all be a fairy-tale story I made up (everyone needs to find his own heroes), but I'm still pretty glad my tale keeps going on.
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