Quality first always - the Honda way. In a bid to reassure its customers worldwide that no vehicle damaged in Thailand’s recent flood crisis will ever be sold, Honda has started the process of scrapping and destroying a total of 1055 cars. The cars include 217 units of Honda Brio, 213 Jazz, 353 City, 150 Civic, 91 Accord, 30 CR-V and one imported Freed. In order to ensure transparency, the vehicle identification numbers of all the cars will be made public on Honda's (Thailand) website www.honda.co.th .In a statement, executive vice president of Honda Automobile Thailand Pitak Pruittisarikorn said, “We will not sell any of the damaged cars to customers, or sell or reuse any of the parts. This is to create confidence amongst our Honda customers that Honda will abide to its credibility of the automobile's quality control".
The decision to scrap the cars has caused many to question why Honda did not attempt to at least salvage some of the parts, or possibly donate the cars. The simple answer is that Honda realized that an influx of flood-damaged cars into the market could potentially cause more harm than it would be worth to the brand’s reputation down the road – especially if people choose to re-sell the car and fail to disclose the car’s past. Furthermore, if the automaker attempted to salvage certain parts of the car they would likely forfeit major write-offs as well.
On-site demonstrations outside Honda’s Thailand plant showed the step by step process of how the flood damaged cars will be made completely unusable. The specialist workers hired by Honda to scrap the cars first drained the remaining liquids from the engine and then dissembled the car by delicate steps. Finally, the skeleton of the car was lifted by a crane into a gigantic mobile pressing machine which turned it into a compressed cube for recycling.
The process of decommissioning and scrapping all the flood damaged vehicles is said to be done in an environmentally-responsible way and is expected to be completed within one month.
Flashback: The Honda automobile plant in Rojana Industrial Park in Ayutthaya Province, Thailand was under heavy flooding in early October that brought production to a halt and aerial pictures showed hundreds of new cars submerged in muddy water. The waters have since receded significantly but many areas still face a major clean-up operation. Production is yet to resume at the factory.
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Video: Honda Demonstrates The Process Of Scrapping It's Car