79 years of innovation: Highlights from the Honda heritage hall
Walk in to the large, light-filled lobby of the Honda Heritage Hall and the six exhibits set out in front of you outline what makes the Japanese firm different from so many of its rivals.
There’s a 1958 Super Cub bike, an immaculate S600 sports car, Honda’s first Formula 1 racer, its first motorbike grand prix race winner and, not to be overlooked, a portable generator.
Oh, and a jet, of course. You can’t really miss the jet.
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Few car firms have wider operations that encompass such a diverse spread of machinery. Especially when you consider the location of the hall in Mobility Resort Motegi, an automotive theme park of sorts built on the grounds of one of two Japanese race circuits that Honda owns.
The Heritage Hall was opened 25 years ago and, to mark the anniversary, was given a major refresh this year, to ensure it will stay relevant for whichever innovations Honda develops in the future.
To mark the occasion, Autocar had a poke around to pick out some highlights.
Bike Engine
Essentially, this is the very first Honda. In 1946, two years before founding his eponymous company, Soichiro Honda made an air-cooled 50cc engine based on an old military generator and used it to help power a bike so his wife could tackle steep hills more easily.
NSX and NSX-R
It’s a mark of the NSX’s significance that the hall features two examples of the transformative sports car.
The red one is a first-gen example of the 397bhp car; the white one is a 1992 NSX-R, which is 120kg lighter than the regular car and weighed just 1230kg as a result.
Asimo and friends
Whatever Elon Musk says, car firms working on humanoid robots is not new: Honda produced its first in the 1980s.
Those efforts on various E- and P-series robots culminated in Asimo, a 4ft 3in, 54kg robot that can recognise gestures and engage in conversation in English and Japanese.
Z and Vamos
The first-generation Z proved popular among young buyers, and also forwent Honda’s long-running air-cooled engine for a water-cooled version.
With the transmission also relocated to beside the crankcase, it was more powerful and less prone to vibration. Meanwhile, the 1970 Vamos truck featured an open body and became popular as a utility vehicle – a sort of forerunner of modern compact crossovers, perhaps.
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The original Civic was developed at a time when a struggling Honda’s future as a car firm was in doubt after a number of technically innovative vehicles failed to win over buyers. As a result, the firm focused on developing a ‘basic car’.
The wheels were pushed to the corners to boost comfort and a 1.1-litre engine made it affordable. The result: Honda sold a million examples in just five years.
RC142
The Heritage Hall contains an amazing assortment of motorbikes but none was more key to Honda’s history than the RC142 from 1959, built to enter the world’s most important road race, the Isle of Man TT.
Becoming the first Japanese firm to enter the race was an audacious move from a company in financial trouble, but Honda said that “dreams are seeded more in hard times”. Honda won the makes’ title in its first season; three years later, Mike Hailwood led a sweep of the top five places.
S600 and T360
Honda was founded as a motorbike firm in 1946 but expanded into four-wheeled vehicles with the T360 pick-up in 1963.
It was rushed into development in the face of Japanese government plans to effectively shut out new manufacturers from the car industry but proved a big hit. It was followed a year later by something totally different: the S600 sports car.
It used techniques from the bike world, such as rear-wheel chain drive, and its 43bhp four-cylinder engine and light weight gave it plenty of performance.
Lotus 99T, McLaren MP4/4 and McLaren MP4/6
Formula 1 cars on display range from John Surtees’ 1966 Italian Grand Prix-winning Honda RA300 to Max Verstappen’s championship-winning 2023 Red Bull, but the most memorable ones date from Honda’s F1 peak in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The 1987 Lotus 99T claimed two wins in Ayrton Senna’s hands, although this particular car was driven by team-mate Satoru Nakajima, the first full-time Japanese racer in F1. Behind it sit two of Senna’s title-winning cars: 1988’s dominant McLaren MP4/4 and 1990’s MP4/6.
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