Honda’s best retailers in spotlight

HONDA Australia recently revealed the winners of its third annual ‘National Dream Awards’ where it celebrated the achievements of its top-performing retailers in 2019, just a few weeks before revealing it would downsize its dealer network under a wide-ranging business restructure.

Before the restructure – which is still to confirm specific dealer numbers – Honda had 105 dealerships which last year recorded 43,868 sales between them.

As GoAuto reported earlier this week, the network could drop to about 60 outlets once the new business model is up and running by mid-2021, at which point Honda expects its annual sales to drop below 20,000.

Across the network, Adelaide dealership Dave Potter Honda took top honours for the metropolitan region last year – handing dealer principal Tony Jowett and general manager Tom Archontidis the Premier Dealership Award – while Townsville Honda, led by Adam Davis, received the same honour in the provincial category.

Townsville Honda’s Arden Lester was also named the most outstanding salesperson (provincial), while Joshua Ferguson from Astoria Honda Brighton took out the equivalent metro award and Michael Vidler from South Nowra Honda was declared best salesperson among Honda’s rural dealers.

Honda’s incentive program also recognises exceptional performance for sales teams and for service excellence, with the ‘Dream Teams’ on the showroom floor as follows: Cricks Highway Honda (metro), Caloundra City Honda (provincial) and Redding Honda (rural).

The service excellence winners were Hornsby Honda (metro), Mandurah Honda (provincial) and Hardman Honda (rural).

“Winning a Honda National Dream Award is the pinnacle of achievement in the Honda dealer network,” said Honda Australia director Stephen Collins.

“I congratulate all the winners on a fantastic effort and achieving such great results, particularly in what has been a challenging market.

“Their commitment and dedication to their customers over the past 12 months is to be highly commended.”

As previously reported, Honda’s national retail awards program was revised for 2017 to better reflect dealers’ performance across a broader range of business benchmarks and to single out achievements in specific areas such as sales and service.