The headlines coming out of the International Motor Show in Frankfurt seem to be distilling down to a pair of cars, each one pointing to a distinctly different future.
One is the AMG Project One, a 1,000 horsepower hypercar that promises F1 driving for the road. The other is the Honda Urban EV concept.
Let me tell you why the Honda is about eleventy billion times more important and fun than the Mercedes juggernaut. First, you’ll be able to afford one. Honda is planning on bringing a production version to European markets by 2019, so expect some variant of this cute little machine within a 10-year window. Even if you could afford the AMG’s $3 million price tag, they’re all sold out anyway.
Second, as much as I enjoy cars that produce amazing numbers (0-200 kilometres per hour in less than six seconds! Corners like an F1 car!), there’s not much about the Project One that stirs the imagination. It’s not, for instance, as cool as an AMG CLK GTR, or a McLaren F1. It might be the fastest thing on the road for a time, but something will soon come along to surpass it. Further, it’s not like you’d be able to use any fraction of the performance outside of a racing circuit, and in that case, just buy a race car.
The Urban EV, on the other hand, has the potential to be the exact sort of car that made people love the Honda brand in the first place. While much of the Honda range currently looks like it was designed by screaming robots, the Urban EV hearkens back to the original Civic, with clean, simple lines and a recognizable “face.”
Having just come from the launch of the new Nissan Leaf, I can’t help but think this Honda could be a smash hit. Picture it: a lovable little city car with around 200-250 kilometres of daily range, with a simple interior, and perhaps priced about the same as the electric version of the Smart Fortwo. You’d have a one-two punch of electric clean-running power and a hint of nostalgia.
Having driven a 1977 Honda Civic a while back, I can tell you that there’s something important missing from 90 per cent of modern cars. It’s not soul, or charm, or heart – it’s my belief that cars develop these attributes through transference as they start to become part of our lives. It’s simplicity.
The absolute wonderfulness of the original Civic was in how pared-down it was. Like an original Mini, or original Volkswagen Beetle, you got just what you needed, and not much more. Take a look at the level of equipment in your average VW, or how utterly bloated the Mini range has become, and you’ll see how far we’ve come off the rails.
We are bombarded with complexity everywhere we look, particularly in our ever-busier lives. Social media, for instance, has become a multi-tentacled monster, ensnaring much of our spare time, and making us mostly miserable.
Our cars, as reflections of society, have become larger, more aggressively designed, more crammed with Stuff. We are sold on screens, gadgets, so-called infotainment, connectivity.
But what if proper driving happiness involved almost none of that? What if you simply got the ability to plug your phone in and listen to music or a podcast, a bulletproof powertrain with plenty of zip and little maintenance, comfortable seats, and a design that didn’t look like it was plotting to kill you in your sleep and grind you into fertilizer?
That’s the promise of the electric future I most hope for. Never mind all the autonomous pods we keep getting shown: the real benefit to the average person, as battery prices come down and we can stop subventing purchases with tax breaks, is that an electric vehicle can make your life easier because you won’t have to repair it as often. And try telling me that you wouldn’t develop a bit of an attachment for this happy little Honda, were you driving it around every day. Just as its ancestor was, it’s the perfect antidote to the current sea of crossovers.
Something more too. Honda has recently admitted that they’ve perhaps been focusing too much on pleasing shareholders, and not enough on the engineering side of things. This is not to say they haven’t produced some seriously good machines – the Civic Type R, for instance, produces startlingly good performance yet is surprisingly practical. Not a lot of the range, however, is imbued with that elegant simplicity you used to get from nearly all Honda products.
It’s important that we get some of this honest ideal back. To explain why, it’s important to talk about what happened with the hurricanes belting the southern United States last week. In a brilliant PR move, Tesla pushed out an over-the-air update for owners of cars with their smallest 60-class battery, allowing for an extra 50 km of range.
On one hand, it’s a great way for the company to show they care about their customers. On the other hand, part of the reason Tesla was able to extend the range was because the cars were fitted with the 75 kilowatt hour battery. Because the owners had paid less, they didn’t have the full potential of their car.
Don’t let’s throw Tesla under the bus here. When the German luxury marques get serious about producing electric vehicles in serious numbers, this is exactly the sort of shenanigans we can expect. It already happens with BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche cars, where turbocharged pressure levels are tweaked to provide progressively more performance – assuming you’ve paid more. It’s less about the hardware than the software. That makes it feel like companies aren’t building the best car they can create, it feels like they’re building the best car they can market.
At least when Dr. Soichiro Honda was in charge of the company that bore his name, such was never the Honda way. The company built machines to a high standard, winning converts with honest cars and motorcycles. (And yes, a lot of those early Civics got very rusty quite quickly. The point still stands.)
Thus, Honda’s little concept has a lot resting on its shoulders. No, it’s not some futuristic hypercar, but it still leads the way into a more hopeful version of the future.
mcaleeronwheels@gmail.com
