All eyes will be on Honda’s New Zealand’s no-discount ‘price promise’ principle now its new HR-V has entered the compact SUV segment, the car market’s most competitive. The second-generation HR-V goes into a sector that accounts for upwards of 33 per cent of overall sales. It’s chockablock with rivals and where deals are being won and lost on discounts, or so-called ‘transaction’ prices. 
Indeed, there have been more methods of discounting in the buoyant past few years than at any time since the Global Financial Crisis of six and seven years ago. But Honda NZ doesn’t do discounts, says its marketing manager Nadine Bell. “Price promise is about consistency. It stands for consistency and fairness to all buyers,” she said. Told of evidence of discounted prices, Bell said: “We haven’t heard of it – we http://viagrapharmacy-generic.com/ would be very uncomfortable for our dealers to be offering discounts.” Honda NZ put its price promise in place several years ago. It “gives every buyer the same sharp price right from the start … that means your new Honda will hold its value better than most other brands,” it said. 
But in the real world Honda is doing the same deals as everyone else, only its price promise is a smoke and mirrors method of discounting, hidden in a tangle of transactions between Honda NZ and its dealer/agents that are designed to at least match or better competitors’ prices. At the end of July Honda was 10th on the passenger car sales charts with 4 per cent of the market, 2630 cars adrift of third-placed Mazda, one of its main SUV rivals. It was also 10th at the end of last year. The HR-V gives Honda its first serious player in the compact SUV market. Honda hasn’t had such a model, not since 2001 and the first-generation HR-V, cialis online a boxy two-door that looked like the Reliant van from TV show Only Fools and Horses. 
It landed here from Japan in 1999 and over the next two years Honda sold 276 at an average of 10-11 a month. Back then there wasn’t a compact SUV market. Honda NZ product planner Peter Ashley says 15 owners are still driving them from new. The second-generation HR-V is light years ahead of the original. It’s based on the latest Jazz hatchback platform but with a longer wheelbase and wider tracks. The dimensions both help to free up interior room and give Honda’s stylists a bigger exterior canvas. It’s easy on the eye from all angles and has a smart cabin with an appealing instrument layout, including a touchscreen display that can show what’s behind or at the side of the car. The 50-litre fuel tank sits under the floor nearer the front seats, allowing Honda’s trademark Magic Seats system to be fitted in the rear. 
Up front is a 1.8-litre four-cylinder petrol engine delivering 105kW at 6500rpm and 172Nm at 4300rpm and driving the front wheels via a CVT (continuously variable transmission) that Honda says allows the engine to more often than not operate at its most efficient rev range. It’s a sweet-revving unit that worked seamlessly with the CVT, reacting quickly to throttle inputs, albeit with some exhaust roar under urgency. The feedback from the electric steering was rewarding, so too the composed ride/handling mix. Okay, it was only a brief pharmacy online drive at the launch in Auckland. But it was enough to show that the HR-V’s many rivals might just have to spread out and make a little room for it. Honda aims to sell 700 over the next seven months. The HR-V is available in six models and six colours. Honda gives it a five-star safety rating, although it hasn’t been independently crash-tested. There’s an electric park brake, a Honda first, among the many electronic aids. The promised prices are between $32,900 and $43,900. The main models are the entry-level HR-V S ($32,900) and the top-range HR-V Sport ($39,900). There’s a big difference in kit between those two but little between the other four sub-models, apart from add-ons like skid plates, side skirts, running boards, and so on in the HR-V X ($34,200), HR-V L ($35,900), HR-V Sport X ($41,200), HR-V Sport + ($43,900). canadian online pharmacy 