Honda Motor’s global head of R&D, Yoshiharu Yamamoto, told local reporters the company is looking to reduce the number of global model variants by 20% to help improve quality.
The company is keen to reduce its exposure to defects after the recent wave of car recalls and quality problems.
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The company has been working intensively on fixing quality problems in the last year at the expense of new model launches. Local reports suggest that the latest Fit [Jazz] subcompact model was recalled five times in the year after its initial launch.
Reducing the number of variants, as well as the number of minor facelifts during the car’s life cycle, would help the company’s R&D centre to focus more on quality and safety, according to Yamamoto.
This follows a similar initiative by Toyota after the safety problems in 2010 which allowed more safety checks to be put in place.
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