Honda Needs To Make More Weird Little Cars

The Honda City may have been a car for the Japanese market, but Honda’s American offerings have had a bizarre streak too. The first Honda ever sold in the US, the 1970 N600 coupe was powered by a 600cc two-cylinder motorcycle engine. It’s tiny compared to a Civic even from 20 years ago, and practically microscopic compared to any American cars from 1970 when the average engine size eclipsed six or even seven liters.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, American automakers were slowly getting the message that not every car needed to be the weight and length of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, but Honda started with that assumption right off the bat. The first mass market Hondas to arrive in the United States, after the niche N600, were quirky and optimistic. Early Civics and Accords could have been bland, efficient boxes like the Chevy Chevette or Dodge Omni, but instead Honda gave the cars angular and dramatic outlines without sacrificing functionality or efficiency. Honda managed to do something that automakers at the time were too set in their ways to understand: It made a car that was genuinely fun to drive, very efficient, and didn’t look like the automotive equivalent of a dentist’s office.

By the time the late 1980s and 1990s rolled around, you couldn’t walk 10 feet without seeing a new, wacky Honda. Cars like the Civic CRX were compact and downright strange compared to everything else on the road, yet produced by a major automaker and enjoyed mainstream success.