Honda Gets Head Start on April Fools’ Day, Unveils “Car Horn Emojis” for 2018 Odyssey
On April Fool’s Day, car brands like to show that they have a sense of humor by putting out hoax press releases that publicize some gag announcement. But PR departments are not so committed to the bit that they’re going to work on a Saturday, so this year they’re making their April Fools’ Day jokes a day early.
In the case of Honda, that means announcing that the “next step in Honda advanced in-vehicle technology” will be… car horn emojis.
Take a look:
Calling the car horn emojis an “integrated vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-human communications system for the modern driver,” Honda says they’ll be offered as standard tech on the all-new 2018 Odyssey minivan, which goes on sale this spring (for real).
The gag is in keeping with what Honda did last April Fools’ Day, when it unveiled a Millennial-friendly 2016 Honda HR-V “Selfie” Edition.
In the press release, Honda quotes “Alice Alerto” (great fake name), the “Honda engineer in charge of horn development” (great fake job title), as saying, “Horns have been around for over a century, but little has been done to make these sound-making devices a personal expression of the driver’s emotions like we’re doing with the all-new Honda Odyssey. We have exhaustively researched and tested these new Honda Horn Emojis to offer the industry’s most advanced in-vehicle technology in the minivan segment.”
You can read Honda’s entire April Fools’ press release here, though if you are a certain tiny-fingered, thin-skinned head of state, be warned: this jokey PR definitely qualifies as #FAKENEWS.
Patrick Grieve was born in Southwestern Ohio and has lived there all of his life, with the exception of a few years spent getting a Creative Writing degree in Southeastern Ohio. He loves to take road trips, sometimes to places as distant as Northeastern or even Northwestern Ohio. Patrick also enjoys old movies, shopping at thrift stores, going to ballgames, writing about those things, and watching Law & Order reruns. He just watches the original series, though, none of the spin-offs. And also only the ones they made before Jerry Orbach died. Season five was really the peak, in his opinion. See more articles by Patrick.