Honda to discontinue Odyssey, Legend, and Clarity in Japan

KUALA LUMPUR: Last month, Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo announced the company’s future strategies that involved trimming the models as well as solely offering electric and fuel-cell vehicles by 2040. In line with that, here comes the first batch of models that are set to be discontinued by the end of this year in Japan. The list covers the Honda Odyssey MPV, Legend luxury sedan, and the hydrogen-powered Clarity, as reported by Nikkei.

Along with this, Honda is also closing its aging Sayama plant by then, the facility which assembles these three vehicles. It plans to consolidate other operations to the bigger and newer Yorii plant that has an annual production capacity of 250,000 units. 

It is to be noted that Honda will discontinue the Odyssey in Japan and not in other markets like the US and Philippines, where it will continue to be on sale next year also. This is because the MPV lags in competition with the Toyota Alphard and even with the stablemate Step WGN in the home market and thus fails to grab encouraging sales numbers. 

Last month, the automaker sold a total of 1,504 units of the Odyssey against the 2,118 units of the Step WGN. These figures put the two vehicles on the 25th and 22nd positions in the month's top 50 car sales rank. On the contrary, Toyota managed to sell 5,947 units of the Alphard, which grabbed 7th position in the same ranking. 

If we look at the local market, Honda Malaysia imported the current-generation Odyssey model from February 2018 with a price starting at RM 254,800. 

Moving to the Honda Legend, the sedan is supposed to feature the most advanced technologies. Because earlier this year, Honda has equipped the car with the new Honda Sensing Elite (the world’s first commercial Level 3 ADAS suite). It is on sale in Japan with a limited production run of only 100 units at a price tag of 11,000,000 yen (RM 416,630). Well, the sedan will sail off into the sunset, the technology will be fitted to other models in the future.

As for the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle Clarity, Honda reveals the sales have always been low because of the high cost of FCEV technology and the exclusive infrastructure it requires. 

Also read: 2020 Honda Civic Hatchback to debut on June 23