Honda’s 50th anniversary in the US is fast approaching. The magic date is June 11, but in preparation for that they’ve remodeled the lobby of their Torrance, CA building to recreate the first Honda USA storefront.
This is what it looked like in 1959. It would be many decades before the Ridgeline (Honda’s first pickup that bigger than kei-size) so they used a 1960 Chevy Apache to deliver SuperCub 50s! What did you expect, a Datsun? Who would have guessed that 50 years later, the little bike builder would be making jets and the manufacturer of that pickup would be in bankruptcy?
Photos of the recreated storefront after the jump.
Inside you’ll find a 1975 Honda Civic CVCC and the 1982 Honda Accord that was the first Japanese car built in America. Other gems include a 1959 Honda 50 (aka SuperCub) and 2010 Honda Fury motorcycle, a “Cuby” T10 engine, portable E40 generator, the first Honda US-built lawnmower (a 1984 HR-214) and a time capsule not to be opened until 2059. How cool is this?
[Images: Honda, Jalopnik]
Very Cool:
A plaque next to the Civic and Accord reads, “Here are two cars that we no longer sell parts for”.
Neat! Any idea what the colors on that pickup truck would have been? AMT makes one as a plastic scale model, so it would be easy enough to replicate….
My guess would be red on white.
@GEN2TWINCAM
Hahahaha! So true!
I remember seeing some seriously cool Honda history pieces when I went for training at the Honda facility on NJ back in the mid 90s. They always rotated stuff through the lobby so each visit had something different for me to see. Oh, and back then you still could get a lot of parts for the classic stuff. Pity it’s no the case today.
I remember hearing a tale about how Soichiro Honda was adamant that Honda should make parts available for any product until the end of time. Unfortunately after he died, his successors did not see it that way.
It’s not a tale, Ben. It was true. Mr. Honda had decreed lifetime availability of parts for buyers of his first products. That is why I could order parts through American Honda for a 1965 S600 (that they never even imported!) up until around 1991 or so, and still get an 80-85% fill rate!
It’s also true that the beancounters didn’t even wait until Mr. Honda’s body was cold before they rescinded that decree.
Brian is right. When I would go to the parts distribution center in NJ in the early 90s I would always want see an automated picking area that was essentially just for obsolete parts. On top of a 40 foot shelving section was an entire tub for a ’73 or so Civic. I really wanted that tub but nobody could ever tell me how to order it (I was a parts manager for a Honda dealer). I made lots of phone calls trying to buy that damn tub but could never get anywhere. On one of my last visits, it was gone-purged with ten of thousands of slow moving parts right into the dumpster.
I remember living in Okenawa Japan with my parents in 1983. They had a brown Honda Civic. It was a cool little car. I also noticed that this store is in Torrance. I reside in california, so I will definitly be visiting this place. Thanks for the info.
It’s always lovely to step back in time and take a look at how things used to be. Honda has been around for some time now and it is involved in a lot more industries as well. It’s sad that the original principals of the company have died with the founder, but that is big business who are in it to make money rather than service a good product to valued customers. Still great to see the old shop front and the ute out the front. Thanks for sharing.