Tokyo Motor Show: Honda celebrates 50 years of automobile excellence

HONDA Motor Co. president and CEO Takanobu Ito, and senior managing officer and COO Sho Minekawa posing with the S660 Concept

Honda Motor Co. unveiled its concept vehicles and announced its lineup of production vehicles to members of the media at the 43rd Tokyo Motor Show during the first press day last Nov. 21 at Tokyo Big Sight. The show became open to the public last Nov. 23 and will run until Dec. 1. Visitors looked very eager to see the much-anticipated unveiling of its Honda S660 and NSX Concept Cars, ushering in a new genre of sports cars that, Honda says, will be available in showrooms by 2015.

On two opposite ends of the sports car segment, the S660 is a revival of its Sports 360 compact sports car while the NSX is positioned as an exotic supercar packed with Honda’s latest innovations including the Super Hybrid SH-AWD (short for Super Handling, All-Wheel Drive). Its midship engine layout is reminiscent of the previous Acura NSX supercar.  With its slogan “The Power of Dreams,” this year’s theme for the exhibit is “Live outside the box.”

The Honda S660 is the company’s latest foray into a sports-oriented, open-top minivehicle and a revival of its Sports 360 compact sports car introduced fifty years ago by its founder, Soichiro Honda. According to Takanobu Ito, president and CEO of Honda Motor Co.: “This year, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary since Honda began automobile sales. In 1962, Honda exhibited a small-sized sports car named Sports 360 at the Japan National Auto Show and we began automobile business the following year. The car, which completely changed the established image of minivehicles, is one of the Honda models which represent Honda living outside the box. And more importantly, this represented the first step toward one of Mr. Soichiro Honda’s big dreams, that was to enter the automobile business. Thus, it is the origin of all Honda automobiles.”

With the company’s comeback to Formula One motorsports in 2015, these two cars are well-positioned to cause a stir in the highly competitive and badge-conscious market.  With Honda’s victory with MotoGP’s youngest champion Marc Marquez, Honda is setting its sights once again on the pinnacle of automotive motorsports—the F1.

“Ever since its foundation, Honda has grown by winning races. Only one year after the start of automobile sales, Honda participated in F1 racing with our first F1 machine called RA271 in 1964. Many people thought it was a crazy attempt at that time, however, in only the second year, Honda captured its first F1 victory. Now, Honda will participate in F1 again starting with the 2015 season. With the introduction of new regulations, competition in the area of environmental technologies will intensify, but we can expect to feed more technologies we cultivate through F1 racing back to our mass-production models. That is the value of our F1 participation. Just the other day, our new F1 engine under development was fired up for the first time. Please look forward to hearing the ‘Honda Music’ for the new era,”  said Ito, as he excitedly announced Honda’s comeback into the world of Formula One.

Height of motorcycle racing

“If we say that F1 is the height of auto racing, the height of motorcycle racing is MotoGP, the premier class of the Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix. In this most prestigious motorcycle series, Honda won all three titles—namely, rider, constructor and team, for the first time in two years. Moreover, Marc Marquez won the championship at the age of 20 years and eight months, realizing a historic accomplishment by breaking the record of Freddie Spencer for youngest champion that had stood for 30 years. I would like to thank Honda fans for their continuous support,”  Ito added.

Aside from the NSX and S660, Honda  held the world premiere of the N-WGN, the fourth-generation model of the popular N series, as well as the planned production model of the Global Compact Series based on the Urban SUV Concept unveiled at the 2013 North American International Auto Show early this year. Other mass-production models on display including the all-new Accord Plug-in Hybrid and Fit (locally known as the Jazz model) are equipped with Earth Dreams Technology, using Honda’s new-generation powertrain technologies. On the motorcycle section, several production models were on display like the Dunk, which is a 50-cc scooter equipped with Honda’s newlydeveloped liquid-cooled engine, and the CB1300 Super BOL D’OR featuring LED headlights and a 6-speed transmission.