Inside the Mind of Honda Australia: An Exclusive Interview with Director Robert Thorp

Honda Australia has a spring in its step after the launch of the born-again Prelude sports car and updates for its best-seller, the CR-V mid-size SUV, including an expanded hybrid lineup. Yet while rival brands are posting record sales, Honda’s growth has remained modest.

The company has also had to scale back its electric vehicle (EV) ambitions after the Japanese automaker axed most of its futuristic-looking 0 Series models shortly before their planned release.

At the same time, the introduction of Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) and record fuel prices have made market conditions even more challenging.

Even so, the brand is finally on track to reach the 18,000 annual sales target it set when it controversially switched to a fixed-price agency sales model in 2021, eliminating price negotiation across its now 84-strong national dealer network.

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Honda Australia’s current CEO Jay Joseph arrived from Honda’s US operations at the same time Robert Thorp was promoted to the position of director in April 2025. After more than a year with new leadership, has the brand finally turned a corner? We sat down with Mr Thorp to find out.

Honda Australia posted just 0.8 per cent year-to-date sales growth after June 2026, a record month for new-vehicle sales in Australia. So why are you so happy?

Yes, when you look at the year-on-year growth, we are up maybe one per cent, but it doesn’t always reveal the full story.

The underlying business is really strong at the moment, and June in particular was our highest order intake in four years. They were real customers at the end of those orders – it wasn’t us relying on non-private purchased business.

So whilst the year-on-year growth doesn’t look strong, the health of the underlying business is really good, and the fact we’ve got that high order intake gives us a lot of confidence that what we’re doing within the business, and the improvements we’re making, are starting to deliver rewards.

I guess for us it’s sort of further validation that what we’ve got planned for the second half of the year, where we do expect to see some retail growth year-on-year, means we’re trending the right way.

So we’ve just launched the updated CR-V and ZR-V, both of which have expanded hybrid lineups. Prelude has added some incremental growth, and then we’ve got Super-One, so each of those models we think will start to translate to genuine year-on-year growth by the time we get to the end of the year.

How much were sales up by last month?

The order intake was about 20 to 25 per cent higher than this time last year.

What do you put the growth down to? Because the two models you mentioned, the CR-V and ZR-V, were the only two Honda models to see sales increase – and only by small margins

The numbers are factually correct. Don’t get me wrong, because that’s actually what we delivered in June, but the underlying order demand, some of which hasn’t been delivered to customers yet, is what’s actually giving us cause for joy.

I think it’s not really just one thing that we’re seeing drive that sort of performance, it’s a combination of factors. That’s an improvement in the business that we’ve been driving for some time. New product – which absolutely helps – and the expansion of the hybrid range have been really important for us.

Launching a model like Prelude generates a lot of interest, and it’s added incremental levels of demand, but it’s also things like our ongoing relationship with our network, which we’re investing quite heavily in and trying to ensure they’re engaged with the Honda business.

It’s things like we’ve really expanded our network training programs to ensure that when you walk into a Honda centre, there’s genuine help and support there for you.

It’s our ownership programs, which I think are finally getting a bit of traction in the market, and our low-price servicing is a great example of that. You know when you purchase a vehicle with Honda, you’ve got that certainty of care for years to come.

So it’s a combination of these things, but they all add layers of incremental improvement to the business. I think that June number, that underlying demand that we’re talking about, is validation of the improvements we’re making.