Today, Acura poked fun at its standing as the number-one ranked luxury vehicle manufacturer in the U.S. by claiming the spot based on . . . the alphabet. This alphabetically prestigious position has been Acura's for 28 straight years, although it's hardly been an easy run, as Mike Accavitti, senior vice president and general manager of Acura states: "Audi has been nipping at our heels since the beginning, and then there was that deal with Amati, which never really had a shot. We even toyed with adding another 'A' on the front of the name, but we're confident that we can maintain our leadership, assuming no one comes along with Abalone or Aardvark or something like that."
Now, of course this is an April Fool's joke, but Acura's actually on to something here. It literally has maintained its position at the forefront of alphabetically ordered luxury-car manufacturer lists since 1986 without contention. (Seriously, this is true—the Japanese luxury brand soldiered on even when the next closest alphabetically ordered automaker, Alfa Romeo, dipped out of the U.S. market in 1995.)
- First Drive: 2014 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid SH-AWD
- Instrumented Test: 2014 Acura RDX
- Instrumented Test: 2014 Acura MDX SH-AWD
We admit that while amusing, Acura's funny bone does somewhat awkwardly draw attention to more regularly used luxury brand ranking yardsticks, such as actual vehicle sales, and to Acura's recent non-leadership in that regard. (It outsold sad-sack Lincoln nearly two to one last year, but only moved about half as many cars as 2013′s luxury king, Mercedes-Benz.) Still, the brand is pushing to streamline its portfolio with the new TLX sedan, which replaces both the TL and the TSX, as well as bringing its latest NSX sports car to market. Both moves should inject some life into Acura, which by all accounts is expected to maintain alphabetical leadership for the foreseeable future.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment