![]() ![]() Under its hood was a 606cc four capable of hitting 9,500 RPM and pumping out a respectable 57 HP. The S600 was the chance for many people to experience this for the first time. Bring a Trailer Sellerįor decades, Honda’s cars had something a bit different about them, and it’s the fact that Soichiro Honda, a former racer, centered sports cars around the driver. The aforementioned mini cars and mini trucks were production vehicles, but they didn’t leave their home market in Japan. The T360 went into production as Honda’s first car, and the S500 followed close behind.Īs Victoria Scott writes, it would take Honda until 1964 to build its first global mass-market vehicle. Later that year, the S360 joined the T360 mini truck and S500 mini sports car at the 9th Tokyo Motor Show. The S360 mini sports car was later shown Suzuka Circuit. In 1962, Honda sent an order to Honda R&D to develop two mini trucks and have them ready for the 11th National Honda Meeting General Assembly that same year. Honda, which was hitting strides with motorcycles but not cars, found itself in a position to make cars or possibly get locked out of the market. Moreover, the bill set rules concerning mergers and acquisitions within the industry, thus limiting the entry of new companies. The first group would comprise passenger cars from two companies the second would include special products such as luxury models and sportscars, including two or three companies and the third would be Japanese micro-cars, or mini automobiles, with two or three companies. This, it was believed, would ensure effective guidance according to the characteristics of each group. ![]() MITI was ready to propose the deregulation of automobile imports by the spring of 1963, and in order to increase the industry’s ability to compete on the global stage, Japan’s auto manufacturers were classified into three groups. That year, The Temporary Measures Bill for the Promotion of Specified Industries identified Japan’s automotive sector as lagging behind, and a plan was developed to put Japan’s automakers on the world stage: Honda’s automotive development was going well until 1961, when Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry decided to do something about the fact that Japanese companies weren’t as competitive as they could have been. Honda began developing cars in the 1950s as an answer to the Japanese government’s demand for a sort of people’s car. The Honda Beat’s lineage can be said to trace back to some of Honda’s first cars. I am not at all surprised to see American enthusiasts scooping up as many Honda Beats as they could from Japan. I’d rate driving the Honda Beat as being on par with the incredible 700 HP Ford F-150 FP700 and the original Acura NSX. Yet, out of all of those cars, the Beat stands proud as easily some of the most fun you can have on four wheels. My fleet currently sits at 25 vehicles a list that includes a Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI, a Saturn Sky Red Line, a Triumph Rocket III, and a massive bus. I stand by what I said up there in the lede. You can save this car for just $3,000, but we need to solve the mystery of how it got here. So, I bet you can imagine both my excitement and horror that one of these great cars has ended up in a wrecking yard in Washington. Beats deliver nearly the same thrill of the Acura NSX, but for a fraction of the price and with a lot more character. I say that from experience as my own little Beat is arguably the best car I’ve ever owned. ![]() The Honda Beat is not just the coolest car you can import from Japan right now, but it’s a car deserving to be on a list of Honda’s greatest cars ever built.
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