As we peruse through my stash of ‘60s beauties for the next couple of months, there will be many beauties and a few rarities. Nonetheless, I doubt any of them will be as sophisticated and endearing as the Honda S600. It’s as if a miniature British roadster had been conceived and manufactured by a mad motorcycle maker, and was given extra displacement, optional alloys and a fastback roof.
What’s not to like, then? Nothing. The S500/600 roadster/coupé was Honda’s second car, and it was already nigh on perfect and completely original. I’m blending the S500 and S600 together, as they are really very similar in every way. The S500 was first shown in late 1962, with sales starting in October 1963 as a roadster only. The S600 was announced in January 1964 and entered production two months later, so the O.G. version really didn’t last very long and remained a rare sight – only around 500 were made.
The S600 was the more definitive version of the Ur-Honda, then. Externally, very little (if anything) really changed. The S600’s grille is noticeably different, with a larger opening to increase airflow. This led to a redesign of the front bumper, which was plain straight on the S500. Early model S600s kept their predecessors’ glass-covered headlight clusters, but those were tweaked to sealed beams by late 1964.
In February 1965, the Coupé version joined the range. It was heavier by about 15kg, which wasn’t too bad a trade-off, especially since the steel roof’s fastback design improved the car’s aerodynamics.
However, the price went up significantly: ¥599,000 compared to the roadster’s ¥509,000. To get an idea of JDM pricing at the time, a base model Toyota Corona sedan with the 1.5 litre engine cost ¥550,000 in 1965, so the little Honda was punching way above its category. But then, it was a high-performance two-seater, not a family car. And Toyota’s answer, the Sports 800 (which debuted in 1965), cost almost exactly the same as the Honda Coupé.
The S600’s rapidly beating all-alloy heart was well worth the expense. Now increased to a whopping 606cc, the jewel-like hemi-head DOHC 4-cyl. was fed by four carburators and produced 57hp at a dizzying 8500rpm, a marked improvement from the S500’s 44hp. A 730kg car like the S600 Coupé could thus reach speeds in excess of 145kph – quite the performance for a car with a 37c.i. motor.
The best engine in the world can still be partially hampered by a clumsy or cumbersome chassis, but that is certainly not the case here. The S600 kept its predecessor’s unique yet very capable setup as was. This consisted in a small ladder frame (this was still the ‘60s, after all) and a front suspension featuring double wishbones and torsion bars. The driving wheels at the rear were independent also, but via a completely bonkers coil-sprung encased twin chain drive system that doubled as semi-trailing arms.
The S500 had been a trial balloon, a first draft. With the S600, Honda were going full-on with series production, putting the model up for sale in all corners of Japan as well as a limited number of foreign markets. This also means the S600 was the first Honda to be made in LHD, as the Swiss market example above shows.
In everyday use, the S600 was not necessarily all fun and games, though. The driving position was not to everyone’s liking (especially taller folks) and noise levels, when the engine was up near the 9500rpm red zone was deafening. Said engine had to be carefully warmed up before attempting any spirited driving and getting all four Keihin carbs to work together as intended took a fair amount of patience.
Still, Honda had managed to hit it out the park with this one, and the world took note. Their involvement in Formula One and their dominance of the two-wheeler sector at that point in time only increased the S600’s halo effect.
And they took things to the next level again in February 1966 with the S800, of course – a sublime unrestored 1967 example of which was parked right next to our feature car. The two of them together were a fascinating pair, but the S600 had the edge thanks to its relative rarity.
Honda sold somewhere between 10-13k units of the S600 in two years – I’ve not seen any precise numbers, only these ball-park estimates. That’s a lot compared to its predecessor, but nearly all of these sales took place in Japan. The S800, on the other hand, would be a true worldwide sales success.
However, the S800 quickly ditched the quirky chain drive for a boring but much cheaper live axle. But we’ll get to that when we discuss that model in depth some other time.
In the interim, we can revel in our gloriously radical and uncompromised S600. These images fail to convey how tiny these are in the metal, but I hope they show how attractive they are. The trickier question being, given the choice between this and the Toyota Sports 800, which one would be my pick. I’m torn between the Honda’s dazzling chassis and the Toyota’s aerodynamic brilliance. Guess I’ll have to vote for both.
Related posts:
Honda S500/S600/S800 – Small, Brilliant and Fast, by David Saunders
COAL: 1965 Honda S600 – The Worst S600 In The World, by David Saunders
1964 Honda S500 – A Motorcycle Maker Finds Its 3rd and 4th Wheels, by T87
These are little jewels of cars. A scaled, down proper car with the best technology of the day, especially in the engine compartment. Hard to imagine someone picking the Toyota Sports 800 over this for the same price.
Those alloy wheels are very interesting but don’t really work for me on this car. They almost look like something Italian from the 70s.
They look like something municipal from the top of a metal rubbish bin.
“via a completely bonkers coil-sprung encased twin chain drive system that doubled as semi-trailing arms.”
These were straight “trailing arms” not “semi-trailing arms” The chain drive requires the swing axis not be at an angle like that of semi-trailing arms.
Sweet .
The only S600 I have ever seen in the flesh was in the Mercado in Guatemala, C.A. in 1976 .
-Nate
Gorgeous little objects of desire. Thanks for the great photos and write-up.
I saw the remains of one in Massachusetts in the late 80s, first one I ever laid eyes on.
Needed a carb stick to synch the carbs, only became commonly available when the Japanese started producing 4 cylinder bikes in the 70s
Had to do a bit of googling for the engine, because I was curious from which motorcycle it came out of.
Suprised to learn Honda didnt make a 4 cylinder bike until the seminal 1969 CB750. And that was a completely different thing, being air cooled.
Anyways Ive seen one of these in a museum, the roadster. Its about the same size as a bugeye Sprite, but even that car might be a twitch bigger. An MGB would tower over the tiny Honda
Honda made 4 and even 6 cylinder Grand Prix race bikes long before it produced the 1969 CB750. There is even a guy who makes reproductions of the 6 cylinder model. And yes those were air cooled too.
The roadsters are very pretty, but these hardtops are a wee bit gawky: the whole top sitting slightly too far back, and the roof slightly over-high, the latter no doubt to fit people with heads.
I wonder if that exuberantly over-engineered rear end caused problems, especially on bumpy roads. The rearmost sprocket is (effectively) splined to the wheel: the forward one is connected rigidly to the rear by the chain and sprocket teeth, and splined into the driveshaft which is geared into the spider gears of the diff. As power is being transmitted, if each wheel is going up and down independently over differing bumps, wouldn’t there be strange reversals of force going into that diff? In a normal trailing-arm setup, the twisting effect isn’t transmitted (going off to the trailing arm joint and sometimes a torsion bar).
No different than driving around a corner. That’s why the differential is called a differential.