A HISTORY OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE HONDA: Engineering Efficient Speed

Engineering Efficient Speed

- MATT BOYD

Honda has a rich motorsports history stretching back to the 1960s, but you wouldn’t necessarily have known it by looking at the company’s automotive offerings. Unlike most other manufacturers Honda rarely marketed performance-oriented versions of its cars in its early decades—or even seemed to acknowledge the existence of its racing heritage within its production car line, relying instead on its motorcycles to carry the performance torch. But they certainly did not lack for confidence in their automotive engineering skills; barely one year after the introduction of Honda’s first four-wheel vehicle—the tiny T360 truck in 1963—the company decided to go racing … in Formula One! As absurdly ambitious as that notion would seem, it didn’t take long for Honda to become competitive, scoring their first win in the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix.