A rare look at the 1965 Honda RA272 Formula 1 racer as it makes landfall in America

A Mazda PR rep once told us that every car in their museum in replaceable, even the original Chicago Auto Show Miatas, except one: the Le Mans-winning 787B. For Honda, that equivalent must be the 1965 RA272, the first Honda — the first Japanese car, period — to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix. If we were Honda, we’d never let it out of the Collection Hall, but this piece of history is currently on a world tour and has landed in America.

Earlier this summer Honda brought it to the UK, where current F1 driver Yuki Tsunoda drove it on a demo run up the hill. Even at low speeds, the engine sound from its V12 and coil-of-snakes exhaust is both deafening and thrilling. You can understand why Tsuonda did not go all out, as this car is absolutely priceless. Again, we’re surprised Honda is even brave enough to put it on a plane, or several planes, for a world tour.

After Goodwood, the RA272’s next stop is North America. It’s a homecoming of sorts, as it made history not too far from here when it won the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City. Honda is sending it to the Monterey Historics this week for another demo run at Laguna Seca.

It’s all part of Honda’s celebration commemorating its participation in F1, which began when the RA272’s predecessor, the 1964 RA271, entered the West German Grand Prix 60 years ago this month.

Between stops the RA272 was kept at Honda’s headquarters in Torrance, California. Before it headed up to Monterey, we were invited to get an up-close look at it. Seeing it in person, you can’t help but marvel at how raw, how purely mechanical it is.

By today’s standards it’s absolutely primitive. There are no seat belts. There’s not much in terms of aero. Exposed, protruding fasteners attach parts like the windscreen and mirrors, which look like fender units plucked off a production car, to the body. Even the Honda font has no flourishes. The RA272’s only embellishment is a red dot, symbolizing the flag of Japan atop its white fuselage.

After all, the RA272 debuted only two years after Honda had sold its first car, the 1963 S500 roadster and T360 truck and just one year since the RA271 entered its first Grand Prix. It was an incredible feat for such a young carmaker to win at the highest echelons of motorsport, but one that had precedence. Honda similarly won their first motorcycle Grand Prix in 1961, just two years after entering their first World Championship race in 1959.

With its spindly exposed suspension arms the RA272 looks extremely delicate. Its total weight was just 1,098 pounds. Its mid-mounted 1.5-liter V12 made 230 to 240 horsepower, which gives it a power-to-weight ratio higher than a modern Porsche 911 GT2. Again, it has no seat belts.

What emanates most from seeing the RA272 in person though is just how ambitiously nuts it was. In 1962, when Soichiro Honda issued a decree to his employees that the company was to compete in Formula 1, most of them didn’t even know what it was. Not to mention, far bigger rivals like Toyota and Nissan, against which Honda was a mere fledgling, hadn’t dared to compete.

Letting an irreplaceable slice of Honda history traipse around the world certainly makes for good press. It has given us all sorts of butterflies, and it’s probably the fourth or fifth time we’ve seen it in person. But if we were curators for the Honda Collection Hall, we’d be sweating bullets every night until the RA272 was safe and sound back home.

If you’d like to see the Honda RA272 in person, it will be at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca this weekend. This weekend there will also a Honda Bikes, Cars & Coffee event on Saturday, August 17, at Honda headquarters in Torrance, but the RA272 can’t be in two places at once, unfortunately. Instead, that event will be a 25th anniversary of the S2000 celebration.