In the United States, the season of hunting for the white Honda has reopened, which is neither a particularly prized species for hunters nor a wave coveted by surfing enthusiasts, but a recurring problem for buyers of white-colored cars from the well-known Japanese brand.
DOES HONDA’S WHITE PAINT TURN MOTORISTS RED?
According to a 2024 class action, the white color used by the Japanese manufacturer has an intrinsic defect that leads to the appearance of bubbles, peeling, and actual flaking after a few years.
Over the years, similar complaints suggest the same problem has extended to other brands from the Land of the Rising Sun (the Japanese website Creative311, has reported regarding Toyota and Nissan vehicles: the C26 Serena appears to be the model with the highest number of reports, but the X-Trail and Elgrand have also exhibited the same manufacturing defect).
However, while the alleged construction errors of Toyota and Nissan seem, at least for now, confined to the Japanese archipelago, those of Honda have manifested repeatedly beyond the Pacific.
THE CURIOUS USA CASE
The 2024 American class action was dismissed in a curious way: the judge himself, who had accepted the defenses of the opposing party – namely Honda – on the grounds that consumers had at most suffered merely aesthetic damage, suggested to the plaintiffs not to give up, procedurally correcting their approach to demonstrate how, in the long term, a bodywork unprotected by paint undergoes potentially structural damage, facilitating, for example, the action of corrosive external agents.
And so the consumers’ lawyers promptly acted: a new lawsuit was filed and this time accepted by the judge. Honda unsuccessfully argued that re-filing the complaint was invalid because the statute of limitations had expired. However, the judge accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that the automaker had concealed the problem from the beginning: a fact that allows extending the traditional time limits in favor of the party kept culpably in the dark. Thus, legal proceedings will move forward in the United States this time.
THE CANADIAN PRECEDENT
A significant problem for Honda, which lives under the specter of another precedent dating back to 2018: at that time, the class action regarding the premature deterioration of paint on certain Civic and Acura CSX models was initiated in Canada and concluded four years later with a $27 million settlement (more detailed information about the proposed settlement is available on the websites www.CivicCSXpaintClassAction.ca or www.CivicCSXactioncollectivepeinture.ca).
Considering that the Japanese automaker is not experiencing a good economic period at all (to the point of pushing its top managers to cut part of their salaries and to scrap the projects of a hi-tech electric car developed in a JV with fellow Japanese company Sony), an unfavorable ruling could further weigh down its finances.
