Honda Makes Sportcar Comeback With S660 Concept
Is there still time to save Honda?
By Imthishan Giado
We love Honda here at MME. No, not boring modern Honda where cars are built to fit neatly into a marketeer’s spreadsheet. We miss old Honda and the days of crazy Soichiro and his little motorcycle dared to do things differently, giving everything from the furious VTEC engine to the world’s first usable supercar, the awesome Senna-tuned NSX.
Hope may not be entirely lost. At the Tokyo Motor Show in November, Honda will be showing its new S660 Concept roadster. The S name is significant – Honda made a pair of fantastic roadsters in the 60s known as the S600 and S800, and then concluded with the utterly fantastic giant-killing S2000, a millennial birthday present in some style. This new S660 clearly draws its looks from the EV-STER concept shown two years ago; and that car was in turn clearly inspired by the Beat kei-car convertible of 1991.
Those of you looking for S2000-like power levels…prepare to be disappointed. The S660 uses a 660cc turbo engine with just 67bhp going to the rear wheels through…a CVT box, the spawn of Satan. In the S660’s favour, the car will weigh under 900kg so performance should be brisk, if not blistering.
The really interesting news is that, baring a poor reception at the Tokyo Motor Show, a production version of the S660 will hit showrooms in 2015, part of a planned three sportscar line-up. We can only live in hope.
Source, pics: Motoring
We can only live in hope that they take this comment to heart: Don’t build it with anything but a proper manual transmission! Nobody likes CVT’s and manumatics are pretty pointless too.