Just three Honda dealers snare ‘excellence’ awards

JUST three Honda dealerships from the Japanese brand’s national retail network of 108 outlets have received Dealer Excellence Awards for their performance in 2014, down from 13 a year earlier.

Adelaide’s Dave Potter Honda in Glenelg South picked up its fifth consecutive award to become the only dealership to have reached the mark every year since the ‘Excellence’ program replaced the previous state-based Dealer of the Year awards in 2010.

Brisbane’s Southside Honda in Woolloongabba made it two in a row, while Blue Ribbon Honda in Yamanto, Ipswich, netted its third award.

In presenting the 2013 awards last year, Honda named 13 dealerships that had met the qualifying criteria – covering business areas such as sales, service, parts and customer satisfaction – and which finished in the top five of their respective group (one of four, based on sales targets).

In the previous year, 17 dealers made the grade.

This time around, Dave Potter and Southside were the only winners in group one, while Blue Ribbon was all on its own in group three. There were no winners in groups two and four, and none from New South Wales or Victoria – two states which account for around 60 per cent of Honda’s network.

A Honda Australia spokesperson told GoAuto: “The criteria was lifted and therefore more difficult to achieve. Many dealers came very close across all dealer groups but only three achieved this time round.”

Honda sales fell 16 per cent last year with 33,000 new registrations – just enough to hold on to 10th place in the list of top-selling brands in Australia, but well down on the 40,000 units it had targeted earlier in the year.

The brand has, however, rebounded in 2015 with a 30 per cent rise in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, with almost 10,000 sales already delivered.

The all-new HR-V crossover has had an immediate impact, and other key models such as the Jazz light hatch have lifted.

In a statement, Honda Australia director Stephen Collins said winning an excellence award was “a very significant achievement” and one that represents “outstanding dealership performance and customer satisfaction”.

“We believe we have some of the best people in the business in our dealer network and this is our way of recognising their commitment to excellence,” he said.