A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:
The first Honda in America restored
What’s the first Honda you remember: probably an early Civic, right? Well, while the pragmatic and cheery little Civic was Honda’s first success in North America, it wasn’t the first car the company exported here. That particular honour belongs to the even tinier N600, a two-cylinder peapod with a small footprint and big dreams. Somehow, against the odds, the first one ever shipped over has survived, and now it’s coming back.
I drove an N600 a few weeks ago in Ohio, an example out of a private collection situated a couple of hours away from Honda’s manufacturing facility in Maryland. On twisting backroads it was a brilliant little car, fizzy and buzzy and eager. Think of it as a Japanese interpretation of a Mini Cooper, and remember that Honda was building some excellent motorcycles at the time, and you’ll get a general idea.
The story of how N600 serial number 1 got saved is pretty crazy. A fleet of 50 Japanese-spec cars were pulled off Honda’s home production line and fitted with larger 600cc engines. Then they were shipped to the United States for cold weather testing in the Midwest; at the end of the experiment, the cars were shipped to Honda HQ in Gardenia, Calif., to await their fate. Honda execs, dispassionate about their machines, ordered them crushed.
Off the 50 went to a scrapyard down the street, but a few days later a Honda employee spotted an N600 buzzing down the road. Turns out the scrap dealer sold three of the cars out the back door; the rest were destroyed while Honda looked on, but a few had escaped.
Enter Tim Mings, the only specialist Honda N600 mechanic in the world. Mings stumbled on one of these early cars sitting on a trailer, and bought it and another N600 sight unseen. He got them back to his garage, stuck ‘em in a corner and forgot about them. Then, one day, he scraped away a bit of corrosion covering up the VIN, and there it was: Honda N600-1000001.
The car is being restored now for the Long Beach classic car show, and then is headed to Honda’s museum in Torrance, Calif. It’s a little bit of Honda history, lost then found.
Automatic braking soon mandatory
While pundits everywhere bicker over the timeline of the autonomous car’s arrival, some of the so-called semi-autonomous features are coming fast. Here’s the latest agreement between the U.S.A.’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and 20 major automakers: automatic emergency braking will be standard on all cars by September of 2022.
That deadline seems a long way off, but remember, the agreement is for all cars. Think of how something like the backup camera proliferated through model lineups and you’ll get a general idea of how automatic braking might spread out. First it’s only available on the fancy-pants versions with high-end stereos and navigation. Next you can get it with cloth seats on the mid-range models. Next thing it’s in the cheapy base versions.
Odds are, the end of this decade will see most compact-and-up cars coming with some kind of automatic braking. There are some arguments to be made against the tech, both on added cost and the worsening of driving skills as our cars become ever more automated. However, 10 years down the road when you step off the pavement onto the crosswalk, an automated-braking-equipped car just might suddenly seem like the best idea in the world.
Camaro swings back at Mustang
Never mind the sweet science of boxing nor the grappling knee-strikes of MMA: the best brawling in the world takes place between Ford and GM, and you can actually buy their haymakers. Here’s Chevrolet’s latest roundhouse, the heavy-hitting ZL1 Camaro, aimed right at the temple of the Mustang GT350.
And it’s a knockout punch. Not only does the ZL1 give the Camaro the huge power of a top-level Cadillac – a supercharged 6.2-litre V-8 making 640 horsepower and 640 foot-pounds of torque – but the ZL1 also gets a new 10-speed automatic transmission. Ten! Count ‘em out while the other guy lies dazed on the mat.
Add in GM’s stellar Magnetic Ride suspension, the stiff new lightweight chassis of the alpha platform, and dinner plate sized six-piston brakes, and you’ve got a real bruiser of a Camaro. If a Corvette won’t work for you because you occasionally need back seats, then here’s the genuine GM weapon to take to the track. Heck, never mind the Mustang: go hunting Porsches.
Rental car really begging to be raced
Of course, not all of us can afford to keep a track-focused pony car as a daily driver, not to mention that some of the best tracks in the world are a flight or two away. Not to worry, Hertz has you covered with the black-and-gold GT-H, the rental Mustang you can really flog.
Here’s maybe an answer to the ZL1 then, as it’s already proven that the fastest car in the world is always a rental car. A rental car with a tuned suspension and 400 h.p., 5.0-litre V-8? Better get the extra damage waiver.
Only 140 examples will be made, so getting your hands on the keys to a GT-H might be tricky. However, if your daily ride is a crossover, then a weekend away in a hot-rod Ford might just be the best break you can get.
Watch this space for all the best and worst of automotive news, or submit your own auto oddities to [email protected].
