American Honda has expanded the eligibility of its Honda and Acura certified pre-owned programs by adding respective tiers that allow for vehicles up to 10 years in age to be certified. 

The Honda brand has launched HondaTrue Used as a CPO program tier, while the Acura brand has debuted Acura Precision Used. 

Each of these CPO tiers cap the eligible vehicle age at 10 and have no mileage limit. 

HondaTrue Used vehicles include a 100-day/5,000-mile non-powertrain coverage and the same limits for powertrain coverage. Acura Precision Used offers six-month/7,500-mile powertrain and non-powertrain coverage. 

Acura’s CPO program now includes two tiers: Acura Precision Certified (which is limited to vehicles up to six years in age and 80,000 miles) and Acura Precision Used. Honda’s CPO program now includes three: HondaTrue Certified+, HondaTrue Certified and HondaTrue Used. The respective tier extensions are now available for Honda and Acura dealers to use. 

Behind the expansion

So, why the eligibility expansion? For one, older CPO vehicles may allow for more younger buyers to get into the brands, especially when new-car prices are as high as current levels.

“The used-car market’s huge. It’s 40 million cars (sold) a year,” said Dan Rodriguez, American Honda’s manager of auto remarketing, in an interview.  “The average transaction price on a new car is over $40,000. So, bringing in new customers to the brand — especially younger customers to the brand — is a lot more difficult. 

“We kind of looked at all that and thought, now, it’s more important than ever to create a medium or mechanism to make it easy for these younger buyers to experience our brand.”

As for the perks for the new tiers, here's how that shakes out.

In addition to the warranty, the Acura Precision Used vehicles includes a complimentary oil change, along with12 months/12,000 miles of emergency roadside assistance, trip-interruption expense reimbursement and concierge services, plus a three-month trial of SiriusXM. It also includes a seven-day/300-mile exchange policy. There is also a 112-point inspection. 

“Higher new vehicle prices make Acura Precision Used and Acura Precision Certified vehicles an even more critical gateway to luxury vehicle ownership for younger customers,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “We are building on the success of the award-winning Acura CPO program as well as the incredible client service and product knowledge of our Acura dealers.”

Meantime, the HondaTrue Used tier includes a complimentary oil change, plus 12 months/12,000 miles of emergency roadside assistance, trip-interruption expense reimbursement and concierge services, as well as three-month trial of SiriusXM. 

The exchange policy is for three days/300 miles.  There is also a 112-point inspection

“HondaTrue Used is a critical new gateway to the Honda brand, especially for young and first-time buyers,” Rodriguez said in a release. “Customers can now shop for a high-quality certified used Honda on our website, and buy with confidence from the most knowledgeable and experienced source — a Honda dealer.”

‘Lot of opportunity’ to increase share

Auto Remarketing asked Rodriguez what impact this expansion would have on each program’s annual CPO sales. 

“We’re expecting incrementality, as a result of that. And really mainly on this new tier that we’re not in right now,” he said. 

Rodriguez said there were 764,000 used Hondas and 97,000 used Acuras that were registered sold in 2020 that fit into the 5- to 10-year-old age bracket. 

“We think there’s a lot of opportunity there. That’s typically not a sandbox that we’ve played in. So, if we’re going to grow our base for the future, it’s a sandbox we probably should be playing in,” he said. 

“And it’s a sandbox that gives us an opportunity to bring that younger buyer in, and in a utopic world, we’re bringing them into our brand with this new tier of Honda True Used or Acura Precision Used and graduating them from that to our CPO product. And from our CPO product to a new. And within the whole eco-structure, we’re creating inventory that we’re feeding to each tier,” Rodriguez said.

“As someone gets out of Honda TrueCertified, we’ve created inventory for Honda True Used.  Our goal would to be have all the Hondas and Acuras within our dealer network, but certainly we want to capture as many there as possible. Because we believe that we really kind of seed the customer for future success as far as experience with the product by going through our dealer network.”