Positioning

One of the things that they've been doing with the Accord is selling more of them year after year with a considerable consistency, being in the top five of sales in the U.S. for almost 20 years. Historically, the vehicles that it was in the greatest head-to-head competition were the Toyota Camry and the Ford Taurus. While the Camry not only stays in the game but leads it (it has been the best selling car for five years in a row), Taurus isn't the competitor it once was, and Nissan has come on with the Altima. (Other competitors in the mix are the Ford Fusion, the Hyundai Sonata, the Saturn Aura, and the Nissan Maxima). Gary Robinson, Accord product planner, acknowledges that whereas prior to 2002, the Accord was the young, sporty choice and the Camry wasn't. But at that point, the Altima took that position, and moved the Accord to the middle, between it and the Camry. So if the Altima is along the emotional vector and the Camry along the rational vector, in setting about to develop the new Accord they picked a point that essentially combined the two factors. While he argues that the Accord Sedan--is the new benchmark, combining the sportiness of the Nissan and the luxuriousness of the Toyota--because there is the Accord Coupe, it pushes the sportiness vector to a new velocity: the Sedan has a three-box shape and an overall European senior sedan-style theme; the Coupe is sleek and sharp with more of a fanboy appearance. Kunihiko Tachibana, assistant chief engineer, Department 1, Styling Design Development Div., Honda R & D (Saitama, Japan), the stylist of the Coupe, talks of how he wanted to create a vehicle that is bold, smart and athletic. Gary Robinson describes it as "an exclamation point." For the vehicle that had once been sandwiched between two competitors, it has moved somewhere else entirely.