THE FIRST SAMURAIS

Japan has been responsible for many of our favourite driver's cars of recent decades, but their ancestors are often much less well known. We take a look at where the big manufacturers began their performance car journeys

- ANTONY INGRAM

JAPAN HAS NO NOSTRADAMUS-TYPE CHARACTER in its folklore but it does have kuda-kitsune, a spirit fox creature that lives in a bamboo tube and is capable of foretelling the future. Sadly I have no such spirit guide, but even without mischievous pipe-based woodland creatures, I reckon I'd have a good chance of guessing the first car you thought of when the term 'Japanese performance car' came up. There might be a few outliers, but most would surely settle on a handful of names: NSX, RX-7, GT-R, Supra.

If you're of a certain age - between maybe 25 and 45 I'd almost guarantee it, with these cars granted legendary status by the likes of Gran Turismo, and the earliest movies in the silver-screen steamroller that is the Fast & Furious franchise. The 1990s period, which birthed the ultimate incarnations of each model, is indisputably the golden era of Japanese performance, as makers flush from Japan's 1980s economic bubble ploughed the sort of money into R&D that even a 1970s Mercedes engineer would envy.

The '90s, though, was not where Japan's performance car story started. For that you have to go back a further three decades. Honda in 1963 isn't a bad place to start: the year the firm most knew as a maker of mopeds launched the $500. Not many brands can claim a pretty roadster as their first passenger vehicle, but Honda can, and it put its motorcycle expertise, born from its debut at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy just four years earlier, to good use.

Previewed by an even smaller S360 that never reached production, the S500 used Honda's first four-cylinder engine, a water-cooled unit with dual overhead cams, a crank spinning in roller bearings, a Keihin carburettor feeding each cylinder, a motorcycle-style chain-driven final drive, and a 9500rpm red line. The 531cc, 44bhp S500 was to an A-series-powered MG Midget as the bullet train is to HS2.