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…)

We’ve been waiting for the Palm Pre to go on sale so we can ditch our horribly outdated five-year-old Sony Ericsson Z500. And even though Sprint’s “Now Network” campaign is now on heavy rotation, we didn’t realize that it was for a product we actually want until we caught this Honda Z600 (not to be confused with our P.O.S. phone) in the latest commercial and started paying attention. Funny how that works, isn’t it? This isn’t the first time some vintage J-tin has shown up in an ad, and we’re sure it won’t be the last.

This is a ways off, but we thought you Subaru 360, Honda N/Z/S and various kei-car owners might be interested in making plans for the World Micro/Mini Car meet. It’s the brainchild of Ken & Sylvia Weger, owners/curators of the Small Wonders Microcar Museum and will take place in downtown Crystal Lake, IL at the University Center, located at 100 S. Main Street, on August 21-22, 2010.

From the website:

This will be the first ever WORLD MEET of its kind. Microcar and Minicar owners and their cars, will gather from all over the world to share their enthusiasm for these small wonders. The Weger’s are expecting over 500 Micro and Mini cars. Those cars under 500cc are considered to be “Microcars”, and those between 500-1500cc are considered “Minicars”. Many marques are expected to fill the lush lawns surrounding the University Center. Vendors will provide food and beverages. Alongside the car show, workshops and classes/seminars are being planned.

[Edmunds]

Click the image above to see the show!

Microcars are on a roll! First a duo of Subaru 360s finishes 1-2 in their class in the Liége-Brescia-Liége, and now a Honda Z600 has broken the 600cc class land speed record at Bonneville Speed Week. We first came across Evil Tweety last year when we pitted it in a hypothetical Blaze of Glory Deathmatch against jet- and ‘Busa- powered Z600s. JNCers, including Evil Tweety’s own driver Eric Burns, voted for JETBOY as their chariot into the afterlife, but that was before anyone knew this bad bird could hit 106.531 mph on the salt flats!

Congrats to fearless pilots Eric Burns and Chris Clay!

[Image: Popular Mechanics]

Last year we reported on this mysterious Honda Z600 with a jet engine protruding from where its rear window should have been. Armed only with some badly translated German, we boldly predicted “that any attempt at turning during full throttle in this thing would be [verboten] as well.” Well guess what? We called it! We called it! We called it like 1-800-Collect, baby! Ok, so it turns out you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that a Garrett JFS100 turbine strapped to a kei car was not going to be a handling monster. And these imaginative Nee Zeelanders laugh in the face of rocket science, as well as in the face of their friend rolling over somewhat anticlimactically. Check out their videos here and here. And you thought this was the only jet powered Honda.

[Source: Jalopnik]

Hondas, if you please [LINK]

After seeing the carbon fiber Honda Z600 that wowed the JCCS crowd over the weekend, we wondered – out loud and to the dismay/puzzlement of other post office patrons waiting in line with us – what is the fastest Honda Z600 the world has to offer?

First, we have “Evil Tweety,” holder of the J/Pro record at the Bonneville Salt Flats with a 99.299 mph run, though its fastest time clocked is 101.5 mph. According to its owner, it retains its naturally aspirated air-cooled 2-cylinder underhood, albeit stroked to 700cc with Electromotive fuel injection, open exhaust, very high compression and a mild racing cam. Ladies and gentlemen, Evil Tweety.

Next up, courtesy of the Gebrüder Dorsch blog, a German entrant that appears to have a jet engine protruding from das boot. We turn to Babelfish to discover that, “These vehicles do hurt… One should possibly drastic penalties, when people of such cultural goods to make a mistake.” We think this means the Brothers Dorsch disapprove of the butchered Z600’s ersatz motor. They continue: “The poor little Honda Z600 a jet engine in the ****.” We would have to agree that jet engines in the **** should be strictly verboten. We imagine that any attempt at turning during full throttle in this thing would be as well.

Finally, we have the latest Frankensteinian Z600, the one that started this pointless line of questioning, a full-on race car built for solo B-mod with a Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle engine mounted between the front and rear axles, precisely in the driver’s right ear. And when you’re rebodying the entire car in carbon fiber, why not go with the widest widebody you can fit wheels under? This also gets bonus points for looking terrifying.

Well, we have no idea which one is fastest, but all of them are probably plenty scary, so we put the question to you, dear reader, how would you rather face death?

1.) Hurtling across the remains of an Ice Age lake ensconced in a 37-year old sheet of tin.

2.) Going warp speed in a home-built jet car that, despite its German engineering, is probably one-use-only.

3.) Snapping your neck with a quick flick of the steering wheel in something possessing the power-to-weight ratio of an electron.

Sound off in the comments.

[Sources: Jalopnik, Dorsch.com]

The Petersen Automotive Museum is one of the planet’s most famous galleries of motorized machinery. Established in 1994, its self-stated goal is to let visitors “explore the evolution of the Automobile and its impact on our culture.” Fittingly, its four-story building is located on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, the epicenter of car customizing culture in the US. As you read these words, the Petersen is holding a special exhibition called “Microcars: The Minimum in Motoring” that celebrates vehicles which are very, very small. Of course, some of the best examples of the genre are simultaneously Japanese, nostalgic, and cars, so here are some photos of the buggies from J-land.

The Honda N600 (left) and the Z600 both used the same air-cooled aluminum two-cylinder 598cc engine. Small but not simple, it boasted an overhead cam and yes, that thing had a hemi (-spherical combustion chamber). The N600 was Honda’s first official import to the US and while production ended in September 1970, the sportier Z began manufacture in October that same year. Achieving upwards of 40 miles per gallon came in handy when OPEC decided to withhold the barrels in ‘73.

Soichiro Honda was a visionary in Japan’s fledgling automotive industry. Few men would attempt a two-seat roadster like this 1965 S600 as his first salvo into the competitive automobile industry. However, in a rare lapse of judgment, Honda was convinced that air-cooled motors like the one in the 600s held the future. When his R&D team proved that water cooling provided greater potential for performance and better emissions controls, he was wise enough to relent control to the younger generation of engineers.

Honda’s 600cc motor may have seemed tiny, but in Japan an even smaller N360 was sold. As part of the kei class, these cars fulfilled a government mandate for automakers to provide a People’s Car for the unwashed masses. The rear-mounted dual-pot motor propelled the Subaru 360 (left) with just 25 horsepower, but drove the egg-shaped, bow-legged runabout to iconic status in Japan. The Mazda R360’s rear V-twin generated just 16hp and served as the company’s first venture into four-wheeled cars, following the manufacture of three-wheeled motorcycles with pickup beds and before that, corks.

If you’re in the city of angels, stop by and see these minuscule but mighty wonders for yourself, along with the rest of the Petersen’s vast collection. The microcars exhibit goes from June 23, 2007 to Feburary 3, 2008.

Perhaps Ming the Merciless would have been more successful in his fight against Flash Gordon if, instead of being an evil Asian caricature, he was actually Tim Mings and had a fleet of Honda N600 and Z600s at his disposal.

We’ve always wanted to visit Mings, owner of Merciless Mings: The World’s Largest Honda 600 Shop, but have never had the honor. Thanks to Jalopnik, which has been on a microcar mission in SoCal these days, we now know what we’ve been missing.

The efficient, front-wheel-drive cars may seem more conventional than other early Hondas like the S- or T-series, but Honda still imbued them with their fair share of borrowed motorcycle technology. The Ns started out as 360cc kei cars but only the 600s were imported to the US starting in 1969, the first Hondas officially imported here. Cars like the S roadsters or Brian Baker’s 1964 T500F pickup were brought over privately or ended up here by chance. The sportier (a relative term) Z came about in 1970, after the N’s run ended but used the same 36hp motor, but in true Honda genealogy the N-series was succeeded by the Life, which later spawned its own offspring like the Life Step Van.

It would have been easy to underestimate Hondas based on the diminutive stature of these early imports, but then again, no one thought a Speedo-sporting 1930’s superhero would look funny in retrospect either.

Click here to read about Jalopnik’s visit to planet Mongo.