Car Previously Owned by Honda

[AnthP]

Hi

My car was first registered to Honda Motor Europe, London and I initially assumed that this was a demonstrator. However, the car did not pass to its first private owner until 1999 and if it had been a demo, wouldnt it have been registered to the supplying dealer.

I am therefore assuming that perhaps it was a Honda senior management car - does anyone have any ideas or even contacts so I could confirm what the car was used for during the first two years of its life ?

Thanks



Anthony

PS - I'm not under any illusion that this was an F1 drivers company car, just curious that's all

[bobbyswanbourne]

My 96 targa is ex Honda also, the story I have is that it was a press car.

[AR]

Post regs or check them with the different articles in the press guys. Best way to make sure IMHO.

[Senninha]

During the '90's Honda had two 'styles' of registration for various vehicles.

These were either to registar with a dealer or direct to themselves. The difference was often to do with whether they were incentivising the dealer with a registration bonus, or simply down to availability. No bonus and the dealer was unlikely to register more then needed.

Therefore, Honda would register a limited numbers/edition vehicle that dealers could borrow for agreed use, read test drives. When the NSX was launched it coincided with the 4WS Prelude being introduced. Every dealer wanted one but there was not enough for the customers. So, dealer registered std 2WS model, Honda registered 4WS model and dealers shared the car for demo's until supply increased.

This is not for sure what happened in those early years, but its highly likely that depending on year of registration, it may well have been a 'shared, demo car.

HTH,

regards, Paul

[AnthP]

Thanks for your comments guys - the shared demo idea makes a lot of sense, Honda UK weren't exactly selling these cars by the bucketload in '97 so every dealer couldn't have had their own demo. Also explains why the mileage was pretty low at 7k after two years, if it had been a senior management car, I doubt it would have been so low - would you leave one of these cars in the garage if someone else was picking up the running costs / depreciation ?

Cheers




Anthony