When someone says ‘mid-engined Honda’, the first model that usually comes to mind is the NSX. We can’t blame anyone for having that idea. After all, it’s one of the cars that defined Honda in the early ‘90s.
If we recall correctly, Honda has only made four mid-engined model over the years. Aside from the NSX, there’s the Beat and S660 sports kei cars and the high-riding Z kei car from the late-’90s. But what if we told you that the company nearly made one as far back as the ‘70s?
OTHER STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
Save the date: All-new Mitsubishi Triton to be previewed in PH tomorrow
Review: 2024 GAC GS3 Emzoom R-Style
As Honda celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, the company is sharing some stories only a few have heard before. The folks from Tochigi recently dove in its archives and showed its proposal for a small, midship sports car from 50 years ago.
There’s no official name for it, but Honda’s archive photos bear the monicker 660. The idea was drummed up in the early ‘70s with the goal of creating a sports car that is ‘environmentally friendly and fun to drive’. It was an ambitious project given that Honda only started making four-wheeled vehicles about a decade prior.
The car was to feature Honda’s groundbreaking technology at the time, the Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion engine, known better as the CVCC. It was a lean-burn engine that ran clean even without the use of a catalytic conversion. On top of that, it was supposed to have a V8 engine.
Initial sketches showed a sleek and low-slung design that could be parked beside European exotica at the time. It was certainly a radical design for Honda given that it had mostly made kei cars, hatchbacks, and small sedans at the time. Aside from a mid-engined layout, there was also a front-engined version proposal.
Honda executives approved of the project, and those sketches quickly became full-size clay models and mockups. The company was dead serious about bringing the car into production, wanting to showcase its ‘challenging spirit’ to the world and proving that Japan isn’t just about small, economical runabouts. Sure, the Toyota 2000GT was the first Japanese sports car that put the world on notice, and the Nissan Z made the idea of a Japanese more mainstream in the West, but Honda’s midship V8 was right in exotic territory.
Sadly, the car was never produced, even if Honda really wanted to build it. So, what led to its cancellation? The oil crisis of 1973 put an end to this passion project and the company shifted its priorities to making more sensible vehicles. Honda called it the ‘challenge that never made it to the world’.
But as we all know by now, Honda never let go of that ambition. Honda’s dream of building a world-beating mid-engined sports car would become reality with the NSX introduced in 1989. Sure, it took nearly two decades to become reality, but one could say its engineered we driven by the power of dreams.
Could this V8 mid-engined sports car reshaped Honda’s history? Indeed, it’s one of the brand’s biggest ‘what-ifs’, and we’re certain that it could have rocked the establishment had it been produced. Either way, we’re glad Honda shared this interesting inside story to world.
To Honda, more stories like this, please.
