Honda at last makes a Civic that steers as it should

Press, 8 May 1986, Page 33

Honda at last makes a Civic that steers as it should

BEHIND the WHEEL with

Peter Greenslade

Soichiro Honda, as a lad, dreamed of becoming a "champion of motor race” in a self-built “machine.”

The story goes that this son of a blacksmith set about realising his dream by buying 500 war surplus engines, setting up his own Honda Technical Institute at a place called Yamashita, and manufacturing petrol-powered bicycles, the first of which was sold in 1947.

Obviously Soichiro was a young man who did not believe in looking back and, in view of Japan’s immediate past history, that made a lot of sense. In 1948 he established the Honda Motor Company, Ltd, and, not long after, British motor-cycle industrialists, generally regarded as the best in

the world, folded their tents and disappeared from the face of the earth, to all intents and purposes. Honda was the happy harbinger of the Japanese motor-cycle industry that has knocked the stuffing out of most, other countries that have entertained ideas about making their mark in the twowheeler world. It was not until 1962 that Honda entered the four-wheeler world with a light truck and the 5360 sports car. Soon after that, the first Honda sports cars reached New Zealand, thanks to Pat Hoare, a Christchurch racing driver whose real loves were the cars from Enzo Ferrari’s Prancing Horse stable.

One of the motoring moments of my life was to settle into a diminutive Honda Sports 500 (or was it a 600?) and proceed to blat over the Summit Road on a balmy summer night, the lights of Christchurch gleaming below. That little open car was, in those days, a delight to drive. It was engineering perfection and although, I suppose, it really did not go very quickly, it gave you the feeling that with it you could have won the Le Mans 24-hour race, if not the Italian Grand Prix. That, indeed was a feat accomplished by the brilliant British former motor-cycle racer, John Surtees. No doubt Monza that year must have been a great day in the life of Soichiro Honda and one can only speculate about his boyhood hopes being realised by an Englishman. Honda’s motor-cycle racing record has been so outstanding that one tends to forget about the fourwheeler competition successes. For example, the Japanese company de-

signed and built a small number of one litre fuelinjected Formula Two engines for the sole use of the Brabham works team. Jack Brabham and the New Zealander, Denny Hulme, dominated Formula Two entirely in 1966, winning every race except three with the powerful and reliable Japanese engines. Such were the thoughts

in the back of my mind as 1 sampled one of Honda’s lastest offerings, the Civic GT, a 1.5 litre, fuel-in-jected development of the Civic Sport hatchback, on the roads that lead to Wairakei’s plush Huka Lodge, last week. This is a car that will cost between $24,500 and $25,000 by the time N.Z.M.C., Ltd, gets locally assembled versions into the showrooms about July. It is a nice little car that will certainly excite New Zealand’s go-faster motoring set and it has impeccable road manners — at least on brief acquaintance. One of the enigmas of Honda (which reputedly spends a fortune on research and devlopment and is billed by its New Zealand assembler and distributor as the most advanced automotive manufacturer in Japan) is that everything with a Honda label that has been cobbled together in New Zealand so far has been a wrist-wrenching torque steerer, although one must admit that the latest 2 litre fuel-injected Honda

Prelude has at least learned some manners. Apart from the game pie, which was on Huka Lodge’s luncheon menu, the thing that impressed me most in the Wairakei region last week was that these new Civics — or those I have sampled so far — steer as they should. To my mind, that is a notable breakthrough, but whether it is by design or just a happy accident has yet to be determined. The people who flashed their pearly whites in a Huka welcome were more marketing than engineering oriented. All the same, these new Civics appear to be rather better cars than New Zealand’s blue-rinse set has been driving for the last year or so. I have no doubt that they will remain as popular as ever, although the price tags could stop some income earners in their tracks. Who would have thought that in the year of Halley’s Comet we would be asked to pay $19,950 for a 1.3 litre two-door hatchback? That is the

price of the cheapest Civic in the range. It is a bog standard manual gearbox car that would not rate a second glance at a local motor show.

For all that, it goes about 1000 per cent better than the first of those noisy and uncomfortable Honda minis that reached our shores all those years ago.

As you will have gathered, the new Civics are not going to retail at bargain basement prices. Nor

is any other make, so do not look at the following figures in isolation. Apart from the aforementioned 1.3 litre LX manual hatchback, all the others in the'new Civic range are 1500 cu cm cars. There is a two-door automatic hatchback at $21,450, a four-door manual at $21,950 and an automatic version, which should retail around $22,950. They are all LX car-burettor-engined cars and

the GT is the only injection version, being PGMF 1 aspirated like the 2 litre Prelude.

Actually, this Civic showing last week was an excuse for N.Z.M.C., Ltd, to tell the motoring press that 10 years have elapsed since the first Honda Civic came off the New Zealand assembly line.

Whether it is worth spending 50 per cent of the elapsed time travelling just to hear that is debatable. But to sample the Huka Lodge’s game pie and to find that Honda has come up with a thoroughly civilised car that steers as it should probably made the whole thing worth while.

If we do not hear from N.Z.M.C. again this year I,

for one, will be disappointed.

Logically, a new Accord line must follow the Civics and then of course, the cars resulting from the collaboration of British Leyland and Honda should begin to flow in to the New Zealand car stream before 1987 dawns.

Do not expect all the Honda news to be bad. Expensive though they may be, I would say that, like the new Civics, the cars that follow should be good.

We will just have to wait and see. Certainly N.Z.M.C.’s marketing people farewelled us from the Huka Lodge with broad smiles. Maybe they hadn’t see the bill.