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.

By that time Honda was also building a road-going sports car—a 2-seat micro roadster called the S500 (“S” for Sport and “500” for its 531cc engine)—which can fairly be called Honda’s first production performance car. Bumps in displacement over the next few years led to the S600 and S800 evolutions before the model was retired in 1970—and with it Honda performance went on hiatus for nearly 15 years as the company built its reputation on supremely reliable, fuelefficient—but slow—economy cars. The “S” badge would return in 1983, tacked onto a version of the model the company had become known for: the Civic. That 85-horsepower Civic S is not exactly what we think of today as a hot hatch, but the benchmark VW GTI only had 90hp that year and it weighed 200 pounds more. Still, it would take another two years—and the addition of a lowercase “i”–before Honda’s performance mojo would truly return.