Honda CR-Z Hybrid Coupé Pulled from North America - Dispatch Weekly

The Honda CR-Z Hybrid coupé will no more be sold in the North American market after six years of dismal sales numbers – a decision by Honda that was a question of when and not if.

Launched in 2010, the CR-Z Hybrid coupé can best be described as a car that make lots of promises but failed to deliver and failed so hard that the sales numbers are appalling. If we take the case of Canada, the car only managed to sell 1,324 units since 2010. This year the car has sold only 17 units i.e. just over 3 each month – numbers that even Honda would be ashamed of announcing.

The unloved and unappreciated CR-Z Hybrid may have been an idea that is worth appreciating – a car that brings in the hybrid capabilities at lower costs – but an idea is not the only thing that matters as execution is the next step and that’s where the hybrid failed.

The car was marketed as having a relation with the fun-to-drive CRXs, but that’s not true at all considering that the CR-Z didn’t provide any driving pleasure what-so-ever. Its heavier build, low engine power output compared to other cars in the same price segment, distasteful styling and ergonomic choices made the CR-Z Hybrid something of a failure right out of the production line.

The company decided earlier that Japanese market will be getting a Final Edition of the CR-Z with a limited-edition treatment, but that’t not happening in North America. The company has said that it will not be launching a 2017 version either and that’s effectively a chapter closed in Honda’s books.

Past 2011, the sales number have been declining steeply and if we put it this way – the CR-Z Hybrid disaster was lingering on for three years after that before the company realized that it was going no where with the car and that putting it in coffin and sealing it for good was the only option.