Curbside Classic: 1973 Honda Life Step Van – A Step Too Far

In the (tiny) world of ‘70s kei vans, Honda tried to usher in a revolutionary design in the inimitable shape of the Life Step Van. What was so revolutionary about it? Well, for starters, it had Honda’s trademark high-revving OHC twin. But that’s what all Honda keis had back then. The other trick was to make it FWD. But after shining brightly for two years, the little van went away. It only took forty years for it to effectively become contemporary.

Finding one of these in the wild is pretty unusual, so I had to make do with what I could here. The Step Van was launched in September 1972 and was produced – only for domestic consumption, I believe – until October 1974, by which time Honda had made a little over 17,000 units. That’s not a lot. Yet these have become iconic in a way that no other classic kei van has.

In the beginning, there was the Life. Well, it wasn’t quite the beginning, it was 1971. The Life took over from the N360 as Honda’s kei car for the masses. It came in two- and four-door saloon form; a three-door wagon was also available. The Life was a FWD design, like its predecessor, and featured a new water-cooled OHC parallel twin churning out all of 30hp.

From the Life saloon, Honda derived a whole family of commercial vehicles. The Life Van was a straight-up wagon with fewer frills, but the Step Van and its Pickup derivative were completely different body-wise. (The TN-V trucks were of a completely different ilk altogether, being powered by a mid-mounted air-cooled twin.)

Honda had just rewritten the kei van book with the Step Van. Instead of basing their van on a RWD truck chassis, they used a FWD saloon as their starting point. And when every other JDM microvan was fully cab-over-engine, Honda gave theirs a (small) front hood.

Even the way these were marketed was pretty hip and groovy. But this “cut-out” advert does show another cunning idea Honda came up with: the door skins are symmetrical. Sure, the Life Step Van was not the first car to play that trick, but in cumulation with the rest, it made for a rather innovative package.

The advantages of using a FWD layout for vans – namely providing a huge amount of flat cargo space, as well as superior road-holding inherent to FWD – were well-known in Europe. Citroën had pioneered the idea just before the Second World War and had been followed by Peugeot, Renault, Alfa Romeo and DKW after 1945. Of all these early FWD vans, the one that Honda engineers allegedly studied most carefully was the DKW Schnellaster, probably because of its powertrain, which was closer to Honda’s than the others were.

Getting a photo of the interior was quite challenging – I pretty much had to shoot blindly. But you do see one key design feature rather well here: the desk dash.

In a bid to sell the Life Step Van as a work vehicle, Honda figured out a way to include a desk into the interior, for those last-minute invoices and notes. Not sure this was a major selling point, but what other vehicle affords this kind of practicality (aside from Rolls-Royces, but only for the rear seats)?

Here’s a better view from Honda’s own press kit. The exterior was innovative and it had an interior to match. You could have used this exact design in the mid-‘90s and, provided that radio also had a tape deck, it would have seemed bang up-to-date.

That might have been the Step Van’s downfall: Japan just wasn’t ready. The mindset was still extremely conservative, when it came to kei trucks. Honda just weren’t able to convince most clients that their FWD van would be as long-lasting and reliable as rival models made by the likes of Daihatsu or Subaru.

Giving their van a touch of extra luxury did not work either: as a family car, the Step Van just did not project the right image. This would all change much later, of course, with the 1982 Nissan Prairie and, crucially, the 1993 Suzuki Wagon R. Tall kei wagons became a segment of their own in Japan, and Honda re-created their FWD vans, now that the public was ready to buy them.

And almost invariably, the Life Step Van’s distinctive nose was adapted by kit makers to fit the new Honda N-Van. A most apt and fitting homage to the O. G., I feel. The real thing is a lot smaller, especially when parked next to a monstrous whatever-that-is 21^st Century van. Even keis have become a lot bigger nowadays.

It wasn’t just the Step Van and its Pickup derivative (extremely rare: only about 1100 units made) that disappeared in 1974: Honda got rid of their entire kei line, including the Z360 and the Life. The only one that was spared was the TN pickup. The firm had just struck gold with the Civic and figured they should focus on that instead of a segment that was almost entirely JDM-centric. They eventually re-entered the kei game, but only after the company had grown to a too-big-to-fail size and had become a major car exporter.

It’s always dangerous to be part of the avant-garde. Honda were definitely attempting something new for this segment, and it didn’t really pan out for them. Twenty years later, the public had come around to their point of view. Too late for the Life Step Van, but at least it has the honour of being the respectable – and even downright cool – granddaddy.