This Is The Most Amazing Honda You've Never Heard Of....

Awesome artical....

by Jason Torchinsky of www.jalopnik.com

Honda isn't really known for its mid-engine cars or all-wheel drive systems. This car is a rarity: One of Honda's few mid-engine cars and it's one of Honda's relatively few AWD cars. It's also small enough to fit on most freight elevators. It's the Honda Z from 1998-2002. Just look at it. This thing rocks.

I'm so fascinated by this car because it's one of the very few examples of a type of car design I always thought there should be more of: A mid-engine car that's not an exotic two seater, but rather a 4+ seater everyday-use car.

There's been remarkably few of these over the years — you could argue the Tesla Model S is one, and certain vans like the Toyota Previa, but hardly any conventional passenger cars. VW almost replaced the Beetle with a fascinating mid-engine hatchback, but that was never to be. In fact, the 1998-2002 Honda Z may be the closest car to that stillborn VW.

The Honda Z is a tiny kei-classed hatchback, meaning it's under Japan's microcar restrictions that keep the engine size and power to 660cc/63HP and it has to fit certain diminutive size restrictions. Honda pegs both the engine size and power with their turbo inline 3, and manages to add a full AWD system in the process.

The rugged-looking little hatchback isn't just some anemic city car, but actually a little go-anywhere utility vehicle. It's got a high ride height, and thanks to placing the engine under the back seat, there's a big hatch in the rear, while under the front hood the spare tire and a handy storage locker are affable roomies. 

I love this little Honda because it's that incredible combination of wildly unorthodox engineering that isn't weird to be weird, but because it's steadfastly the most rational way to do things. If you're going to make a kei car with all its draconian size restrictions, it's your duty as a car designer to make as much of the space in the car usable for the driver and their pals and crap, and the Honda Z does just that.

As if all this hyper-efficient packaging wasn't enough to engorge your desire glands and fill your want bladder with raw covet-bile, get this: ZZ Top did their ads.

Yep, playing off the common use of the alphabet's caboose, the bearded, guitar-rotating fellas of ZZ Top acted as spokesbeards for the car in Japan. The ad campaign looks like it went far enough to merit special Honda Z logo-shaped guitars, which is pretty much the ultimate quality endorsement.

Oh, and there was a song, of course. Here's the lyrics, so you can plan your next serenade:

Honda Z! Z! Z!
You're fine, drivin'
Guys make a noise drivin'!
I'm dying to make you mine
I'crazy for Z!

Try it, now! try it, now!
You're too cool Z!

Honda Z! Z! Z!
You're strong, do no wrong
Beat everything shinin'!
You slip along, and leave me lone
But I won't give up Z!

Hold it now! Hold it now!
I want you so bad Z!

(Guitar Solo)

I can't be the only one smitten with the Swiss-army knife appeal of this little thing. Honda really should take a good look at this design, and, appropriately scaled-up for us tubby Americans, introduce it as the next Element. Maybe four doors, enlarge that front trunk/locker, and possibly a little jog in the roof over the back seat like the Nissan XTerra to subtly hint at the engine location. 

That'd be deep-fried gold. Honda, you know how to contact me.

Source;

http://jalopnik.com/this-is-the-most-amazing-honda-youve-never-heard-of-784404318

How Honda Revealed The Government's Top Secret Stealth Bomber First

The aircraft known in popular culture as the stealth bomber was built with nearly a decade of work, billions of dollars, and total secrecy from the U.S. government. Even the contractors who worked on it didn't always know what it was. So how did a Japanese carmaker reveal it before the Air Force?

By now, that famous triangular black wedge is so famous that any little kid could identify it on sight. But it wasn't always that way. 

The project that created the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit was so deeply hidden in the shadows that for years the government denied it was even in development. Even today, we rarely tell anyone where we have them deployed for fear of scaring the piss out of other countries. 

Planning for the project began in the late 1970s when the U.S. needed a replacement for its aging B-52. Defense officials had high expectations for the plane — it would need to fly a payload of nuclear bombs to the Soviet Union in just a few hours while remaining nearly invisible to radar.

Development was officially underway in 1981. The Advanced Technology Bomber program was one of the largest and most secretive military endeavors since the Manhattan Project. The bomber was a radically high tech plane in nearly every way, from its use of composite materials to its sophisticated electronics suite, radar deflecting shape, containment of its own radio signals and tiny heat signature. Here's what Global Security said about what it was designed to do:

With massed bomber attacks a thing of the past, the ATB would have to be capable of carrying out its mission alone and without fighter escort: one airplane, carrying out precision attacks, in the absence of many.

Kind of scary when you think about it, especially if you're the Kremlin.

So it's pretty easy to see why the government wanted to keep the lid on even the smallest details of the project. According to the Los Angeles Times, most suppliers had no idea what they were working on, and the government set up dummy corporations to order the parts, which were sometimes picked up in the dead of night by unmarked trucks. For years, both Northrop and the Air Force denied that the plane even existed at all.

The shroud was lifted in late November 1988 when the plane was finally unveiled to the public — sort of, anyway. At a press conference in California, reporters and other spectators were kept 200 feet away to keep from learning too much about how it worked, according to an Associated Press story at the time. 

The thing is, America had already seen it weeks earlier, and they had Honda to thank for that.

In October, Honda debuted this ad for the 1989 CRX Si which featured the most accurate representation of the stealth bomber that the public had ever seen to that point. It featured stealth bomber preparing for launch with Top Gun-esque music in the background; the plane has the starring role until the CRX Si pulls up in front of it. 

The ad even makes fun of the bomber's classified status: "Shrouded in secrecy for years, the stealth bomber will soon be introduced to the public," the announcer says. "For the record, we introduced ours first."

No, the Air Force didn't give Honda permission to film a commercial with their new superplane just because they were fans of the CRX. The plane in that ad is actually a nearly full-size mockup of the bomber commissioned by Honda's ad agency Rubin Postaer & Associates.

Today, this kind of thing would probably be done with computer graphics. But RPA, to their credit, went all out by building a massive and extremely convincing model of the plane that was used in both that TV commercial and print ads.

The New York Times said the mockup was 3/5 the size of the real thing, weighed 20,000 pounds, measured 100 feet from wing tip to wing tip, and was made of sheet metal built on a steel frame. The mockup was built in California, shipped in pieces to Florida, then assembled on a 2-mile runway in the Everglades designed for the Concorde. The model itself cost about $200,000 to construct.

It's actually a rather fitting ad campaign when you think about it. The CRX looks like any old hatchback, but in reality, it was more fun to drive than many of the dedicated and more ostentatious sports cars of the 1980s. The Si may have been front-wheel drive with only 110 horsepower, but it provided a riotous good time with great reliability and mileage to boot.

Like Honda themselves in the 1980s and 1990s, RPA was an ad agency that knew risks could have big payoffs. According to Automotive News, they signed off on the $9 million "stealth" campaign without monitoring the costs along the way. They must have been vindicated when the print ad won a Clio — the ad world's most coveted prize — in 1989.

Not bad at all, considering they also managed to unveil the stealth bomber to the world before the government did. From a 1989 Los Angeles Times story:

A Northrop spokesman said the Honda campaign did not affect the timing of the stealth introduction. "But we did get a good chuckle out of it," said Tony Cantafio, vice president of public relations at Northrop.

So how did Honda manage to put together a gigantic model of the stealth bomber while it was still wrapped in secrecy? Did they hack into Pentagon computers? Intercept U.S. military communications? Send a team of highly-trained Prelude-driving ninjas onto a base to to steal the blueprints and kill any witnesses?

Nothing that exciting, but news stories from the time aren't too clear on where RPA and Honda saw it. The LA Times and Advertising Age say it came from available Northrop sketches, including one that was used in a recruitment ad in a newspaper. Newsday wrote that it came from a drawing released by the U.S. Air Force earlier that year. That New York Times story also said the design came the recruiting ad, as well as from a plastic model of the plane sold by Revell.

An article on the B-2 on Wikipedia, that wonderfully useful but sometimes questionable source of information, claims that "the mock-up was close enough to the B-2's design to arouse suspicion that Honda had intercepted classified, top secret information, as the B-2 project was still officially classified in 1988."

The article does not cite a source on that bit of info, and in checking old news clips for this story, I could find no evidence that this was the case. Quite the opposite, according to an Oct. 1988 story in Newsday:

The Air Force sees no harm in the commercial. "It does not appear any security was violated," a spokesman in Washington said. But he refused to say if the design was right. And [RPA ad writer Bob] Coburn couldn't swear to it. "We don't know," he said. "It's our interpretation."

At any rate, it doesn't look like Honda got hauled before Congress to explain the bomber or anything like that.

Regardless of where they got it from, RPA's mockup was good enough to land in a museum. In 1989 the firm donated it to the Strategic Air Command Museum near Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, South Dakota, where it stayed until 2004.

Sadly, it was destroyed that year so that an actual B-1B Lancer could be put on display, according to the Rapid City Journal. Honda's agreement with the museum stipulated that the faux bomber be dismantled if the museum ever got an actual aircraft, and they did. The mockup was sliced into scrap pieces and hauled off for recycling.

As for the actual B-2 stealth bomber, it's had a bit of a mixed record since the end of the Cold War.

The U.S. originally wanted 132 of them, but at a staggering total cost of $2.1 billion per plane — as well as steep $60 million routine maintenance that must be done every seven years — the Pentagon only currently has 20 in their fleet.

While it has been seen action in a multitude of conflicts, some have also questioned its strategic usefulness against America's modern enemies. From the LA Times again:

"It's the ultimate hangar queen," said Winslow T. Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a Pentagon watchdog group. The bomber, he said, is not useful for waging the kind of warfare being fought today against low-tech enemies. "It's irrelevant in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

Somewhat humorously, it could be argued that the CRX met the exact opposite fate.

No one will ever accuse that car of being a "garage queen," and it's extremely hard to find any example that hasn't been raced, modified, rebuilt, raced again, crashed, stolen, hooned half to death in parking lots, or just generally abused in the normal course of its lifespan. Cherry, unmolested CRXes are the unicorns of the Honda world, and somehow, the CRX's connection to the stealth bomber now makes it even cooler in our eyes.

Regardless of the bomber's record, it's still an incredible technological achievement and a force to be reckoned with. But if you're ever fortunate enough to see a B-2 in person — at a base, an air show, or, before it drops its payload on your town — feel free to smile and say, "That's nice. But Honda did it first."

Photos credit RPA, Honda, AP, Getty Images

Hat tip to Dan!

Source;

http://jalopnik.com/how-honda-revealed-the-governments-top-secret-stealth-666462873

From the Observer archive, 16 June 1963: a remarkable man called Honda

Dare to Dream, Soichiro Honda on one of his early motorbikes.

Just 10 years ago, a Japanese businessman on a machine-tool shopping expedition to this country decided to attend the Isle of Man TT motorcycle races. He was shocked by what he saw. His own company – Honda – was at that time turning out a 250cc machine called the "Dream", which developed 13 horsepower; the equivalent 250cc British machines competing in TT events gave 36hp. The realisation of the difference between the two was a turning point in Soichiro Honda's career. When he returned to Japan, he immediately established a research department (headed, as it still is, by himself) with the sole aim of producing a machine that could compete with the world's best in Grand Prix racing.

By the end of last week's Manx TT races, Honda had scooped up a first and a third in the 250cc class and a first in the 350cc. Incidentally, he had also become the world's biggest manufacturer of motorcycles. Early this month, the company started pilot production in Belgium. After only seven months of selling in Britain, Honda claims it has 40% of the 50cc market.

Soichiro Honda is the new Japanese tycoon: self-made, determined, with a touch of genius. He and men like Konosuke Matsushita of Matshushita Electric and Masaru Ibuka of the Sony Corporation are as different from the semi-feudal bureaucrats of the prewar zaibatsu cartel as today's Japanese economy is from prewar days.

Honda is 57, son of a blacksmith, and left school to be apprenticed to a garage in Tokyo. He says that he's been obsessed with speed ever since he can remember. Honda's early days after the war could hardly have been less impressive. He went into the motorcycle business in 1948 when he bought 2,000 surplus Japanese army petrol motors and fitted them on to the crossbars of ordinary bicycle frames.

As sales boomed, he incorporated the Honda Motor Company with a capital of £1,000 to begin full-scale motorcycle manufacturing.

After the Isle Of Man revelation, Honda scrapped his old two-stroke engines and developed a four-stroke, knowing that if he could give them a reputation in the racing world he would be able to develop his export markets. It took four years before he won his first major event in Japan.

All Honda's success has been built on sophistications of production techniques. His plants are more like watch factories than mass-production machinery plants. The entire purchasing, production and distribution systems are so integrated that plants have no stockpiles of finished products or raw materials. Each day's production moves directly from factory to dealer.

The company's 6,000 employees are among the highest paid in Japan. The average monthly wage is £26 13s (plus two annual bonuses and fringe benefits) compared with a nation-wide average of £23 06s. In common with other big Japanese firms, Honda is firmly paternalistic. Supplying housing, medical care and holiday resorts to its workers at nominal cost. The workers own 30% of the stock (Honda himself owns 10%) and two out of three own either a car or a motorcycle – far above the Japanese average.

Honda spends most of his time at a new £1.5m research centre. Spread over 26 acres, near the Saitama plant, where innovation goes on round the clock. The company spends an average £150,000 a month on research, which is one of the biggest research budgets in Japan. Much of it is directed at repeating Honda's success with motorcycles in other fields.

Honda is planning to market sports cars designed to attract teenage sports car enthusiasts in the United States. Conscious of the Grand Prix successes in promoting motorcycle sales, Honda is now engaged in a crash programme to develop a Formula II racing car with which he expects to surprise the racing world next year.

And more is on the way. Honda will announce its entry into the light plane market soon. The company has developed a plane which is expected to take a substantial share of the market now dominated by the United States.

It plans to establish a chain of private flying fields and aero clubs around Japan – eventually expanding abroad – which will give sales a practical, promotional boost. In the same way, the company has been busily creating interest in motorcycles by building Techniland parks throughout Japan, with racing tracks, hill-climbing facilities and novelty rides to keep the children happy – all employing Honda products.

A racing circuit has been built at Suzuka and Japan's first Grand Prix car race was held there in May this year. Nineteen of the world's top racing drivers were invited (at Honda's expense) to compete.

The Honda Motor Company is in a strong financial position by Japanese standards. Its capital has increased from £1,000 in 1948 to £9.9m in 1963 and its profits have never fallen below 20% cent of the paid-up capital.

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2013/jun/16/observer-archive-soichiro-honda-1963-profile

Automobile Magazine: Vile Gossip: Is Honda Coming Back to Us?

by Jean Jennings of www.automobilemag.com
You would think Honda has been quietly seething about the trash talk the enthusiast press has been heaping on its bland lineup of perfect cars for the past decade. You know, like: We want a CR-Z like that 1990 CRX. Could the Accord be any more boring? Why can't Honda bake a little excitement into the Civic along with all that reliability and ridiculous resale value? Even Consumer Reports went off on Honda's brand-new 2012 Civic, calling the interior "dismal" and pulling its coveted "Recommended" rating. Whoa.  

We don't like boring cars at Automobile Magazine. But here's a shot of reality: Times have been tough. Honda saw a recession coming and pulled in the reins on frivolity when it designed the subdued 2012 Civic. "We thought the market would be more value driven," explains American Honda executive VP John Mendel. "It has been, but not at the cost of content."

Well, of course not! We're Americans, for heaven's sake. But was the 2012 Civic really a mistake? Honda had a jazzy redesign in the works soon after its introduction. Before it could act, Consumer Reports struck. Yet Honda sold 317,909 "dismal" Civics in 2012, making it the third-best-selling car in the U.S. The Accord (you know, the previous stodgy one) was the second-best seller at 331,872. The CR-V was the best-selling SUV/crossover at 281,652. We should know in our hearts that when times are tough, Americans buy Hondas.  

Says Mendel: "Here's the conundrum for any mass-market brand building three vehicles that each sell 300,000 examples a year. You have to be edgy yet not offensive. It's like a red suit; you say, 'Wow! But it's not for me.' The number-one ice cream sold in the world is still vanilla. It's horrible to say, I suppose, but you can't be so polarizing. It's a nightmare for designers and engineers. We want to be fun, yet we want to be safe, but we also want to be out there. 

"It tweaks me when I read that Honda has lost its way. No one sweats what the customer thinks more than we do. An old friend at Ford used to say that at the end of the day, you have to pass the pub test. You throw your keys on the bar. When you do and people see them, you don't have to explain yourself. Honda has always passed that test."  

Still, the 1990s were the end of hot Hondas as we knew them. That's when chief engineer Nobuhiko Kawamoto, the brilliant father of the world's first aluminum production car, the 1991 Acura NSX, became president and, sadly, transferred control from the wild-eyed engineers to the responsible manufacturing and marketing guys. Although he had been a racing mechanic himself, he pulled Honda out of Formula 1. By doing so, Kawamoto saved his company from the serious threat of a takeover by Mitsubishi Motors (imagine that). Honda then got down to the business of building sensible Civics and Accords with a vengeance. Mister Kawamoto retired in 1998, and we still miss talking with him. 

Fortunately, the racing heads in the company did not go away. In 1993 they became Honda Performance Development, keeping the pilot light burning as a subsidiary of American Honda. Now, on the eve of the Acura NSX's return to production, it is fitting that the HPD guys might be building the successor to the CRX of our dreams -- a hot CR-Z very much like the HPD concept we spied at the 2012 SEMA show in Las Vegas. The concept has a 185-hp, supercharged four-cylinder engine, a sport suspension, a trick exhaust, big brakes, and eighteen-inch wheels. These HPD guys have pretty good credentials: since 2006, some ninety-eight IndyCar drivers have done business with HPD-prepared racing engines and have completed more than a million miles of practice, qualifying, and racing with only six in-race engine failures.  

You may want to begin a letter-writing campaign to Honda and put the hot CR-Z on your wish list. Meanwhile, there might be another Honda you can fall in love with. We have driven the new 2013 Honda Accord, and it is magnificent. Two weeks ago, most of the staff abandoned the office for a unique, bracketed, head-to-head test of eight mid-size cars, arguably the finest group of family sedans ever on the market at one time. Go to automobilemag.com or download our May iPad issue to read the report. I will tell you one thing: the 2013 Honda Accord blew everyone away. It's been a long time coming.

Source;

http://www.automobilemag.com/features/columns/1305_vile_gossip_is_honda_coming_back_to_us/

Honda History: Car Buzz - Unearthed: 1991 Honda CRX Si

by Jay Traugott of www.carbuzz.com
 

A completely original example of one of the best models Honda has ever built is now up for sale. 

 

There was a time when Honda was considered a rebel in the automotive industry. It didn’t always play by the rules established by larger automakers. Those companies often felt that when it came to cars, bigger was always better. Instead, Honda designed small and medium-sized cars that were very reliable, had solid power outputs from smaller engines, and were a hoot to drive. Today it is claimed, and rightly so, that Honda has lost some of its former magic in its quest to go more mainstream.

While we hope Honda one day manages to rediscover its roots, there was a time when it built one of the best all-around small hatches on the market. It needs little to no introduction but the Honda CRX is unquestionably one of the Japanese marque's finest models. First launched in the US in 1983, the CRX was powered by a 1.3-liter inline-four with just 58 horsepower, which was soon upgraded to 1.5-liters with around 75 hp. But what was truly incredible was its fuel economy numbers. The US-spec CRX HF (High Fuel economy) returned 41 mpg city and 50 mpg highway – and this was more than a decade before the first hybrids began to appear.


On top of this, the CRX was still wicked fun to drive thanks to that peppy engine and five-speed manual gearbox. The second-gen model launched in 1988 and while its exterior design wasn’t all that dramatically different, Honda made some major changes under the skin. For starters, the CRX switched to a full independent wishbone suspension and fuel injection engines, which ranged from 1.5 to 1.6 liters. Outside of the US, however, Honda offered buyers an optional 1.6-liter VTEC inline-four that was good for 150 hp. The CRX was only the second Honda model to receive a VTEC engine; the Acura Integra came first.

The very fact Honda had the balls to put such an advanced and powerful engine in a small and unfriendly family car, even if it was overseas, says a lot about its rebelliousness. Try to picture an American automaker at that time, take Chevy for example, putting a state-of-the-art, fuel efficient high-output four-pot in the old Cavalier three-door hatchback: That car had a choice of two thirsty and uninspiring four-cylinders and a V6 option. US buyers could also opt for the CRX Si, which came with a 1.6-liter unit that eventually produced up to 108 horsepower and was mated to a five-speed manual.

A third-generation CRX came in 1992, but it was officially called the Civic del Sol. Silly name aside, it featured a targa top roof and wasn’t met with the same enthusiasm amongst fans as the first two gen models were. In 1997 however, the del Sol was discontinued, thereby ending the CRX lineage. Honda tried to pass off the current CRZ hybrid as the spiritual successor to the old CRX but that car simply failed to capture the spirit of the original, despite it being the first hybrid to offer a manual gearbox. Today, the CRX still has a loyal following with many owners driving their cars with minimal mechanical problems.

This 1991 CRX Si that’s currently up for sale on eBay has just 39,000 miles on the clock and is completely original with no modifications. Power comes from that wonderful naturally-aspirated 1.6-liter inline-four mated to a five-speed manual. The car’s second and current owner bought it from its original eighty-year-old owner around a year ago and has kept it in pristine shape. It comes with the original owner’s and service manuals as well as an unused jack, spare and toolkit. As of writing, the top bid was $12,100 so it’s clear that people are willing to pay a solid amount for an all-original CRX in top condition.

 

Source: cgi.ebay.com

 

Source;

http://www.carbuzz.com/news/2013/3/16/Unearthed-1991-Honda-CRX-Si-7713369/