No, we’re not talking about a new Honda transmission – that would be “Hondamatic”.
What we’re talking about is how strong the presence of Honda is in the marketplace every time the company makes a change to one or all of its ATVs.
Honestly, it’s like magic how the industry gets stirred up when Honda introduces a new model or a change to an existing one. We can monitor that magic on this website by the number of Facebook ‘likes’ we get on Honda articles. It’s pretty impressive and begs a couple of questions.
One, what’s the source of the magic? We don’t think it’s rooted in awesome new technology. Frankly, Honda has lived by the “simpler is better” adage for a long time and only recently has re-activated the drive for new and innovative tech the company was famous for ten or fifteen years ago.
We do think it has more to do with rider confidence and rider experience. There are so many thousands of satisfied owners and former owners of Honda products out there, the company has established an image of unsurpassed quality and durability over the last five decades. We used to joke you could buy any Honda product and start beating it with a club from the day it left the showroom and keep beating it for the next ten years and it would still perform faithfully and be worth ridiculous money used.
Maybe an exaggeration, but there are a number of enthusiasts out there who firmly believe Honda’s quality is better than anyone else’s and have the years of service to prove it.
No, we don’t think this is enough to stir the souls of hardcore off-roaders – but wow, are there ever a lot of curious onlookers to our posts.
It begs another question: What if Honda started to capitalize on this magic strength it owns and began offering more models with top-of-class performance? The company could put some pretty solid competitors in the rear-view mirror, pronto!
