On June 11, 1959, a tiny motorcycle company set up shop on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. It had only sprung to life in Japan eleven years earlier, but its founder, Soichiro Honda, was not known for taking the easy road. (more…)

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. (more…)

Here is the first of a series of vintage race videos that we’ll be posting this week. We stumbled upon this while catching up with beoneoneoh, who can always be counted on to unearth the Sunny-related. This is footage from a race that took place at Tsukuba Circuit almost exactly 32 years ago, on May 29, 1977.

In the hotly contested TS Class all the major players came to the fight: Nissan with the Sunny, Toyota with the Starlet, Honda with the Civic, and Mazda with the Savanna RX-3. Sunnys saw much success in the series and this race was no exception. According to the video’s notes, factory Nissan driver Kenji Tohira took first place in the No. 15 Sunny 1200GX.

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Why is it that most classic car enthusiasts love station wagons? Is it because they’re symbolic of a time gone by and all but extinct from new car lots? Do we just fondly remember going on family road trips? Or maybe it’s the car-like stance combined with the practicality of an SUV. Many of us at here at JNC are certified wagon nuts and so are the guys at Hemmings. We hope their Wagon Snippets become a regular part of the blog, and we’re stoked to see them start off with some J-tin, a 1979 Honda Civic!

On Sunday, June 7 This Old Honda will be hosting a Honda & Acura Car Show at Formula H Motorworks in Middletown, New York. It’ll be the perfect opportunity to check out classic S600s, JDM Beats, and more! Doors open at 10am. For more information visit the links above. Admission is free!

Here’s an interesting item found in one of the many small shops in the Ameyoko district near Ueno Station. It’s a glow-in-the-dark shoe featuring a Toyota 2000GT. We’re not sneaker freaks, but we tend to gravitate towards anything vintage and Japanese, and in recent years Japanese sneaker company Asics has been bringing back some of its very cool old school designs under the Onitsuka Tiger label.

A little research revealed that the 2000GT shoe was a limited edition created as part the Electric Tiger Land campaign (the video in the link clearly shoes a 3-D 2000GT being rendered). It’s kind of cool that when they decided to come up with a stereotypically Japanese theme that includes skyscrapers, Super Sentai and subways, they chose the original Toyota supercar to represent the automotive side of things. This campaign ended last year though, replaced in 2009 by a new campaign celebrating the company’s 60th anniversary (this video has a glimpse of a first-gen Honda Civic). But if you want the 2000GT shoe, it’s probably still there at the shop where this photo was taken.

Closeup of the largest of five 2000GTs after the jump. It’s headlights glow in the dark. (more…)

America’s longest-running T.V. game show “The New Price is Right” got its start in 1972 and is still on the air today. Many of the old episodes are available for viewing free of charge on the interwebs. What interests us especially are some of the J-tin prize offerings on the show. Here are a couple video stills:

First item up for bid is a Honda Civic, which looks to be ‘73:

Incidentally, the model has apparently lost control of the car at this point.

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Honda’s new Insight hybrid went on sale in Japan earlier today, accompanied by a minisite covering the history of their ecologically-minded vehicles. Starting with the Super Cub motorcycle’s OHC four-stroke motor in 1958. The first car is the kei-class N360 of 1967, followed by the 1972 Honda Civic CVCC, which stands for Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion and made the Civic the first car to meet US 70s emission standards without a catalytic converter. Interestingly, there’s then a 27-year gap between that and the 1999 Insight. Surely they could have inserted a CR-X HF or something in between, right? The Insight goes on sale in the US on Earth Day, April 22.

Here’s a random web banner ad we came across the other day. It’s Honda USA’s 50th anniversary and it looks like they’re starting to promote it. We’ve got our party hats on. Don’t harsh our buzz, Honda!

It’s Tokyo Auto Salon time again, and you know what that means. All the weird and wacky custom cars of Japan come to Makuhari Messe in Chiba to show their stuff. Reports are filtering in all over the web, but NoriYaro has a posted a few cellphone shots.

Let’s start with the craziest one first, this may look like a normal Toyota 2000GT, but walk around to the side and you see… (more…)