Hairy-chested Honda
The Age
Wednesday October 25, 1995
WHATEVER the world's car designers are smoking, we'd like some. Two years ago the only proper sports car around was the Mazda MX-5. It's still the benchmark, but suddenly we're being buried in small, stripped-out, in-your-face roadsters.
Giving a mega-boost to the value of Fuji and Kodak shares at the Tokyo Motor Show that opened yesterday were two new street-rad roadster concept cars from Honda and BMW.
BMW has threatened severe retribution for anyone revealing details of its new kid until tomorrow, but we can say it is the result of the shotgun wedding between a sports car and a motorcycle hinted at broadly by BMW corporate gunslinger Dr Wolfgang Reitzle when he was here several months ago.
Now the CEO of the BMW-owned Rover group, Reitzle made the point then that BMW was Europe's only single maker of cars and bikes and it made sense to produce a small, lightweight sports car using one of the company's brilliant two-wheeler engines. We thought he was having a lend of us, but be patient.
The Honda exercise has been given the usual terrifyingly creative Japanese acronym. It's the SSM (which stands for Sports Study Model), but significantly it's a front-engined, rear-drive two-seater.
Why is that significant? Because that's what the MX-5 is, and that's what the Daewoo No.1 featured in Auto Age last week and due in two years' time isn't. The SSM promises to be a proper rear-drive sports car, along the same lines as the others unveiled this year, like the MGF, Lotus Elise and Renault Spider (the Fiat Barchetta and Alfa Spider are front- haulers).
It's also unusual in that it runs Honda's first in-line five-cylinder engine, mounted east-west. The styling is remarkably hairy-chested for Honda, with Ferrari-like roll hoops behind the cockpit, a hefty bonnet line, an aggressive nose with big ``H" badge and recessed headlamps and tail clusters.
We'll have more details next week on the SSM as well as Honda's first four-wheel-drive wagon, the CR-V; a new eight- seater people-mover dubbed FM-X; a glass-topped Odyssey called the Exclusive (what else?) and a pop-top camper version of the Honda Accord (settle down) . . .
© 1995 The Age