Honda Civic to step up sedan market rivalry

The new Civic marks the eighth generation of the model since it first launched in 1972 as Honda's first volume offering. As the car that has come to define Japan's third largest automaker, Singapore distributor Kah Motor is taking the launch of the Civic particularly seriously. Kah Motor head of marketing Jacqueline Yong said: "Consumers will have raised their expectations of a sedan -- and we believe that the all-new, eighth generation Honda Civic is engineered to (meet) every expectation." The January rollout means that the Civic must compete for attention with no fewer than six other auto launches -- all looking to benefit from low COE licence prices and the month's traditionally strong car sales. While none of the six directly compete with the Civic, 40 new cars will be introduced into Singapore over the next 11 months. Accordingly, Kah Motors launched the Civic via a S$250,000 (US$153,000) event, reinforced by a print launch campaign in conjunction with creative agency Pepper Inc and MindShare. The campaign included a teaser ad stating that the Civic was once again the car to 'rewrite the rules'. The launch event, meanwhile, also highlighted Kah Motors' community project for 2006, the Honda Civic Drive for Charity. As part of this fund-raising effort, a special 'one-off' neutron blue VTi edition will be auctioned off. The new Civic competes with such models as the Mazda 6 and the Nissan Primera. "Some vehicles in the sedan segment can provide fun-to-drive performance, safety or environ- mental performance; but only the Honda Civic can deliver all this simultaneously with style and sophistication -- with models custom-tailored for a performance enthusiast, a technology enthusiast and a mainstream buyer," said Yong.