Dec 15th, 2009 by Ross Edwards
The Honda Element has never lived up to Honda’s sales projections, but will still be getting a new lease on life. Honda has announced that the seven year old Element will get an overdue redesign soon. According to Autoblog, Honda originally planned for the Element to sell 75,000 units a year, and it will only manage about 15,000 sales this year.
Normally a car that doesn’t sell well is killed off, but Honda is sticking with the Element. Sentimentality doesn’t have anything to do with Honda’s decision to redesign the Element. Apparently it is relatively cheap to produce and doesn’t infringe on sales of other Honda vehicles. The Element shares its platform with the CR-V, but almost no buyers shop for both, Honda’s executive vice president told Automotive News.
It will be interesting to see where Honda goes with the Element’s styling. The SUV has sold mostly based on its functionality paired with a kind of antisocial box styling. If Honda messes with the Element’s function to improve its form, the LUV (that’s lifestyle utility vehicle in Honda’s advertising language) will lose its appeal.
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