Hondissan
No, I didn’t just slam my fingers on the keyboard, no these are not jumbled letters from Scrabble. Were all trying to wrap our heads around the recent news from the Carworld.
Honda and Nissan have decided to merge, yes, you read that right Honda and Nissan are in current talks of a merger and if were hearing about it this means they have been working on the plans already to do so. They are planning to finalize this Merger by 2026. The internet is ablaze with hot takes from both sides of the motorsports world. Nissan fans are wondering if Nissan’s name will go first. Honda Fans are wondering if Honda’s name will go first or will they do something goofy like create a a name like idk… Stellantis. Let’s dive into this merger and imagine what it might mean for motorsports, car culture, and maybe even the local car’s and coffee.
First off, let’s talk lineage. Honda gave us the screaming banshees of the Type R series, engines that sound like they’re powered by Red Bull and pure spite. D Series to K Series Engines that filled so many Honda Fanboys hearts with Joy that matched with a laptop seemed to be an unbeatable recipe for so long. Damn even Hector ran 3 spoon engines with T66 Turbos and NOS. Now don’t get me started with Nissan and Oh, just a little thing called the GT-R. You know, Godzilla. The king of street racing, drag strips, and scaring Corvettes and Lamborghini’s into early retirement. From a car enthusiast standpoint and looking at the current market trends I wonder what this means for the cars we know and love so well. Honda still makes the Civic and it still is a present force in the car community. Albeit I don’t see newer Honda’s tearing up local drag strips or other tracks as of late unless they are backed heavily by sponsors and big teams. They seemed to have dropped the ball in a major way on the new Prelude making it a hybrid But, may have made up for that blunder with the Acura Integra Type R that’s set to release next year. The new Integra looks Promising. Outside of that Honda Just like other manufacturers have been pushing crossovers and SUVs a lot more as of late at least here in the States. When all we want is another S2000 with that K-series V8 that was mocked up (If you haven’t seen it Google Honda K48 V8). Nissan has the Z and the GTR (for now), 2024 was the last year of the GTR at least. The Z seems like a flop although it seemed so promising when it was first released but I think its price point compared to other cars in the market like the Supra make it hard to pass on those cars with better performance. Nissan’s focus lately has seemed to be away from Nissan as a brand and more on Infinity adding performance to cars like the Q60 which way outperform the Z.
Now imagine these two coming together. What are we going to get? A GT-R powered by VTEC? A Civic that can do 0-60 in under 3 seconds but still has room for your groceries? This merger is still fresh, so we’re all just speculating. I am very interested to see how this merger goes especially being a fan of all cars and seeing how terribly run the merger between FCA and Stellantis went. One thing I am happy about and hopeful for is this merger keeps both brands in Japan so they can remain JDM brands. Both brands have great engineering and even better histories I think with the right leadership they can continue that legacy of greatness. one thing I hope is that they both continue to make cars that enthusiast can be proud of, otherwise the car culture will lose two of its biggest stars.
