CARY, N.C. -

American Honda is adding non-CPO used vehicles to its HondaCertified.com platform, a move the company says can help it capture more of the used Honda market and more efficiently and effectively introduce younger buyers to the brand.

When consumers arrive at HondaCertified.com, they will now be able to search Honda dealers’ inventories for used Hondas up to 10 years old, as well as the already available certified pre-owned inventory at those stores.

“When we look at the overall used-car market, it's almost 40 million cars a year. And all the big growth with the big box stores, it really showed us that we're not really capturing as much of that opportunity as we'd like,” Dan Rodriguez, American Honda’s manager of auto remarketing, said in an interview Friday.

“We'll sell, between Honda and Acura, a little over 3 million used cars a year, industry-wide. Through our dealers, we're about a million of that,” he said. “So, we think there's great opportunity there.”

And it could help grab back some of the share of used Hondas that might have otherwise been sold at a competitive-brand dealership or some of the new entrants to the used-car space, Rodriguez said.

“And we think there's nobody better to represent our product than our dealer network and we want to make it easy for customers to find product through that channel, where we know they're motivated to make sure they have a great brand experience,” he said. “In a utopic world, our goal would be to bring that young first-time buyer in through a used car and really graduate them to a CPO and then eventually to a new car. So, we can kind of keep them for a lifetime." 

The latter point underscores another reason for the expansion of the site: that there’s also an opportunity to bring in buyers who might otherwise be priced out. The hike in new-car prices has made it “a little more challenging for that younger buyer to experience our brand,” Rodriguez said.

So, Honda is utilizing its existing CPO website to give them an easy way to do so.

“We know we've got a great dealer network; we've got a great product. Who better to prepare a car and optimize that first experience than our dealer network?” Rodriguez said.

The next step in the process is rolling out the inventory, he said, and then expanding the program in 2021. Additional features will be added to this platform in coming months.

“With the continued rise in new-vehicle prices, the first vehicle purchase for many buyers will come from the used-car market, and our upgraded website makes this process more simple and enjoyable,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “As a leading brand among first-time and younger buyers, expanding our branded website to include used vehicles up to 10 years old offers customers more high value options with quality Honda products and their local Honda dealer standing behind their purchase.”