There is a view that Japanese automakers made no mistakes in the 1990s, but anyone with this idea obviously forgot the 1995-99 Honda Odyssey. The minivan seems hard to screw up, but Honda did it-Isuzu also paid the price.

Recall the early 1990s: Dodge Caravan, Plymouth Voyager and Chrysler Town & Country were the hottest family cars on the market. Although they are actually just tall K cars, competitors (especially the Japanese) struggle to come up with a minivan that is even remotely competitive. Competitors that are not good enough are everywhere on the road: Chevrolet Astro, Ford Aerostar, Toyota Previa, Nissan Quest.

Honda is known for doing things its own way—the Honda way—so it came up with its own minivan. Based on the hot-selling Accord, the 1995 Odyssey had four front hinged doors and a low car-like stance. Honda believes it knows its customers better than anyone, and the company is convinced that this is a truck that will appeal to Civic and Accord owners.

However, as we know in hindsight, this is not the case.

It is clear from the first test drive that Honda made a rare mistake. The Odyssey does provide a car-like driving experience similar but not identical to the Accord. It even managed to provide passable acceleration from the Accord's 140-horsepower, 2.2-liter inline four-cylinder engine, which gave it a fuel economy advantage over the V-6 van, which was not faster.

But minivan buyers don't want a vehicle like a car. They want something like a bus with many seats, many cup holders, and a lot of luggage space. Here, Honda is only two to three. The beautiful third-row "magic seats" fold into a well on the floor, but this means that the spare tire must stay in the cabin and eat up valuable cargo space. The swing-out rear door exacerbates the problem that other minivan sliding doors solve-over-excited children are eager to enter Disneyland and Space Mountain, and crash into a car parked next to you.

In a comparative test with the Nissan Quest in March 1995, the Nissan Quest was a small but more traditional minivan at the time. We praised the Honda car-like driving position and tried to be as friendly as possible to its too small cabin: " We "If the absolute internal volume is the top priority, I will assume that you will not consider either of these two," we wrote. "If you need a lot of space, there are better options and better the value of. "(Man, we know how not to mess up the feathers, or what?)

Facts have proved that absolute internal volume is the top priority for most buyers. The sales of the first-generation Honda Odyssey have nine bad situations: 25,000 sales in 1995 and 27,000 sales in 1996. In 1994, Chrysler's monthly sales of minivans doubled. If that wasn't bad enough, in its first year of speeding up, Odyssey ran head-on into Chrysler's greatly improved 1996 Dodge Caravan, Plymouth Voyager and Chrysler Town & Country-the first round doors with double sliding doors. . Toyota's first passable minivan, the Sienna, came out in the 97 model year. Odyssey had no chance, and sales in 1997 and 1998 dropped to 20,000 vehicles per year.

Now, any other bad car story will end with this paragraph: Honda made a bad product and didn't realize it until the market rejected it. Four years later, they finalized the drawing board and came up with something truly better—the second-generation 99 Odyssey, which casts the mold Honda still uses today—and has lived a happy life ever since.

But the Odyssey’s story has a strange twist: In 1996, Isuzu began to sell it as an oasis.

The simulcast of Honda and Isuzu must be one of the strangest rebrand deals in automotive history. When Oasis sneaked into the Isuzu showroom in the 1996 model year, things were already very bad. Isuzu was an important SUV player in the late 80s and early 90s, and Trooper competed with Mitsubishi Montero and Ford Explorer. (Isuzu’s lively Joe Isuzu ad helped a lot.) Honda does not have its own SUV, so it arranged for the Isuzu Rodeo to be relabeled as the 1994 Honda Passport.

The problem is: Honda is known for its manufacturing quality, while Rodeo assembled in Indiana is not. Passport has had a huge impact on Honda’s quality statistics during the four years of wearing the Honda badge. Just before Honda abandoned it, Isuzu had the last laugh: the second-generation 98 Rodeo/Passport had serious frame rust problems, and 2010 In 2009, Honda had to repair or buy back 150,000 Passports. The experience was so bad that Honda sealed the Passport nickname for 20 years.

At the same time, just when the Odyssey failed to attract buyers, Honda began to rename the Isuzu Trooper to the 1996 Acura SLX-just in time for Consumer Reports. Due to its alleged tendency to rollover, it gave it an "unacceptable" "Rating. The inevitable litigation dragged on for most of the fifteen years, but for Acura, the damage had already been done. It withdrew the SLX from the showroom in 1999, and Acura's first local SUV MDX was ready two years ago.

So even if it gets a minivan that buyers don't want, Isuzu still seems to get a better deal.

Facts have proved that putting the Isuzu badge on the Odyssey did not generate any desire. Isuzu only sells 3,000 Oases each year. For reasons that no one can fully explain, they have become extremely popular as taxis in New York City.

Maybe if there is a second-generation oasis, Isuzu will be with us today. But we don’t live in that parallel universe. Chrysler still dominates minivans with its upcoming Dodge Caravan. Its sales far exceed all other bikes (thanks, car rental companies), but at least Honda Odyssey sales. It is ahead of Chrysler Pacifica (if not by much) and Toyota Sienna and Kia Sedona.

Still, it's hard to believe that Honda and Odyssey would be so, so, and so wrong 25 years ago.

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