A representation of the float that American Honda plans to lead the 2023 Rose Parade.
The annual Rose Bowl football game on New Year’s Day and the preliminary Rose Parade have lost some of their allure in both sports and marketing over the years, but Honda plans to inject some life into the California-based pageant on Monday by marrying its latest brand-marketing campaign to an inspirational float.
Leveraging “Forever Determined” on a float for the 134th Rose Parade, Honda will showcase its commitment to advancing mobility through innovative technologies and corporate determination. Its key TV advertisement, in fact, depicts a company determined to rise from its start providing motorized scooters, then motorcycles, to small cars, to bigger cars and SUVs and trucks, to off-road and race-track mastery, to its latest innovation, Honda Jets — with a promise that the automaker will be a significant player in the propulsion technologies and associated vehicles of the future.
It’ll be the 13th time that Honda has led all floats as the presenting sponsor of the Rose Parade. “Our determination to advance the future of mobility is embodied in the Honda products on our parade float and in the 2023 Rose Parade theme of ‘Turning the Corner,’” said Jessika Laudermilk, American Honda’s assistant vice president of marketing, in a press release. “Honda continues to embark on new initiatives utilizing our core technologies that will help people make their own lives better, today and tomorrow, and we’re proud to showcase that in this year’s Rose Parade.”
Honda’s float will serve as the stage for the parade’s “Opening Spectacular” for the first time. This Rose Parade will feature a musical performance by multi-platinum artists Fitz and the Tantrums, joined by young singers and the Rose Parade Youth Dance Group.
In terms of highlighting Honda per se represented on the base of the float will be Honda’s Prologue, its first all-electric SUV, due for showrooms in 2024, as well as the electrified Acura ARX-06 “race machine” that will compete in the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and a Honda electric motorcycle. “Flying” above the float will be the HondaJet Elite II, which the company described as “the fastest, farthest and highest-flying aircraft in its class,” and a future product, the Honda eVTOL (for electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft. The float even will be powered by a specially configured Honda 3.5L, V6 engine.
Not to be forgotten, the paxce car of the parade is the all-new hybrid-electric 2023 Honda CR-V hybrid, and a 2023 Honda Pilot TrailSport will serve as the sound car for the parade.
Honda is no johnny-come-lately to the Rose Parade. California was Honda’s first major U.S. market and still ranks as its most important, and the Japanese automaker first collaborated with the Tournament of Roses to provide two-wheeled vehicles for the 1962 parade. Honda has been a float participant since 1977 and has provided the official Tournament of Roses vehicle since 1994.
