Starting Small: 1971 Honda Z600 Coupe and N600 Sedan brochure
Posted on Nov 8, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments
Everybody has to start somewhere. And although the Honda Motor Company‘s first four-wheeled products were the brilliantly designed S(port)500/S600/S800 roadsters of the mid-1960s, American buyers weren’t able to purchase those through official channels. The first Honda cars that we could—and did—buy in those pre-Civic days were the Z600 Coupe and S600 Sedan, the front-wheel-drive pair that were virtually dwarfed by the contemporary best selling import, the Volkswagen.
1970 was the first model year that Honda cars were sold here, and this charming eight-page brochure is from the automaker’s sophomore year. We particularly love the flower power-painted Coupe, fresh off the showroom floor.
VTEC was decades off: The Coupe and Sedan shared a tiny 42-hp, 599-cc SOHC two-cylinder engine, and their circa-1,330-pound curb weights allowed them to reach a respectable 75 MPH on the freeway and up to 40 MPG. That this last figure is almost achievable today (39 MPG highway) in a 2,811-pound, 143-hp 2015 Civic sedan shows you how far we’ve come in 44 years.
Have you ever driven an air-cooled Honda car, like an early Sedan?
Remember when they had to crush hundreds of these early Hondas because they didn’t meet some kind of regulations?
No, because it’s something that never happened.
A businessman bought up dozens of Subaru 360s and used them in an amateur dirt track setting, if that’s what mean.