The Acura RSX will live on in our memories as the swan song of a golden age in front-drive sport compacts. Acura will not be using the name on an upcoming electric SUV as has been previously announced. Unfortunately, that reprieve comes at a tremendous cost.
Announced last summer, the RSX name was supposed to come back as a high-riding four-door crossover, much to the disappointment of Honda heads everywhere. Not only was it electric, it embodied a design that can only be described as Kermit the Frog scrunch face.
Well, in an announcement last week, Honda said it would cancel the RSX plus two other electric models in an unprecedented ¥2.5 trillion ($15.7 billion USD) loss. The devastating write-down will be Honda’s first annual loss in the almost 70 years it has been a publicly traded company.
It was about a year ago that Honda made a huge to-do over the 0 series sedan and SUV, two electric concepts that it claimed would usher in a new age for the company. The 0 sedan looked like a truly futuristic concept wedge and the 0 SUV had a distinct sci-fi appearance that stood out from the common traffic crossovers we see today. Love electrics or hate them, at least these would’ve been impactful to see in the real world.
By naming the prototypes the 0 Series, Honda was signaling that the cars would mark a paradigm shift. In Japan, the number zero is often invoked as a shorthand for the complete reimagining or reset of a product. Think Ultraman Zero, which writer Yuji Kobayashi chose to represent a “restart of Ultraman’s story from scratch,” or the S180 Crown, nicknamed the Zero Crown because Toyota wanted to revamp the model’s image from that of an understated, conservative sedan to that of a dynamic sports sedan by creating an all-new chassis and engine from the ground up.
Honda intended the 0 Series to be clean-sheet lines in the sand that would demarcate a new beginning. Instead, it’s swallowing the biggest loss in the company’s history, discarding years of research and man-hours. Honda says the write-off is due to tariffs, the ping-ponging of electric vehicle mandates from the US government, and the need to increase competitiveness in Asia.
Honda says it will now shift to more hybrid development. It will still work on EVs, but the development timeline will be stretched out much longer. It’s not clear when the decision to axe the EVs was made, but with oil prices rising due to conflicts in the Middle East, it could have been a good time to release some EVs. When merger talks between Honda an Nissan fell apart, Honda believed that it had the upper hand and chastised Nissan for seeking equal partnership. Perhaps this turn of events will make bring Honda back to the negotiating table.
Images: Honda
