Early Honda cars - was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

[Mike Stein]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Cisin via cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 6:48 PM
 
> The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not.  After demise of the mid 
> 1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out 
> of hand and went into production), Honda engineers took a 360CC parallel 
> twin, detuned it and upped it to 600cc, added a differential, and a 
> reverse (tacked on to the outside of the case), and put it in a car body 
> that resembled the Mini.  AN600 was the first Hondas officially imported 
> into USA (1970).  A later Z600 had a "sportier" body, and one was cut in 
> half in the down-under movie "Malcolm"
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Sounds like you never got the original N360 "Street Car" (360cc 'Mini' before the 600cc 'upgrade') down there; not a big seller here in Canada either:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_N360

Their first 4-wheeler was actually the T360 pickup truck; ridiculous as it sounds in North America, a light 360cc truck actually found a market among golf clubs for course maintenance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_T360

I loved my S600 roadster while it lasted; it wasn't very fast but sure sounded great at 10,000 RPM. Not many cars have "adjust drive chains" as part of regular maintenance ;-) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_S600