After this foray into the sports car market, Honda for the next 10 years concentrated on establishing itself as a major global car manufacturer and developing expertise in low emissions engine technology.


Honda sportscar lineage

The launch of the Prelude range in 1978 signalled a return to Hondas with increasingly sportier pretensions, later to be joined by the CRX which demonstrated to a wide audience the amazing flexibility and performance potential of Honda's VTEC system. But it was the NSX which really showcased Honda's abilities. This widely-acclaimed, all-aluminium supercar brings together rewarding, yet ultimately forgiving handling and blistering performance in a stunning mid-engined package that boasts the traditional Honda attributes

of reliability and good build quality. Finally, Honda's recent Type-R derivatives - the Integra and the Accord - with their high-revving, no compromise engine technology aimed at knowledgeable enthusiasts, have been a precursor to the HONDA S2000.


Honda sportscars through the years:

1963: S500
1965: S800
1978-1982-1988-1992-1996: Prelude
1983-1988-1992: CRX/Del Sol
1991: NSX; 1994: NSX Type-R; 1995: NSX-T
1991: Beat
1996: Integra Type-R
1997: Civic Type-R
1998: Accord Type-R
1999: HONDA S2000


Racing improves the breed

Just as the HONDA S2000 is a spiritual successor to the S800, so too does it encapsulate the forward, innovative thinking that has always operated within Honda and which has been the force behind the company's phenomenal motor racing success story. That racing improves the breed has always been a deeply held belief at Honda. Soichiro Honda, a keen racing driver himself in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s, saw racing as a means of not just promoting sales but also as a way of stimulating creativity: moving engineers between racing projects and production cars, he reasoned, could only be to the benefit of the customer, quite apart from its morale-boosting effect on employees.


Motorsport experience stretches to the very top

That philosophy permeates throughout the company to this day and it is interesting in this regard to reflect on the background of successive Honda presidents. Kiyoshi Kawashima, who succeeded Soichiro Honda in 1973, was the designer of the company's first four stroke engine and laid down the racing engines for the 1950s and 1960s TT races; Tadashi Kume, who took over the presidency in 1983, was responsible for the engines with which Honda entered single-seater motor racing; and Nobuhiko Kawamoto, who headed the company between 1990 and 1998, designed and worked on the racing engines under Kume, was head mechanic for Jack Brabham's victorious 1965 Formula 2 team and played a key role in the Formula 1 programme of the 1980s and 1990s. And among the variety of posts held by current president, Hiroyuki Yoshino, was the presidency of Honda R&D and Honda Racing Corporation between 1983 and 1987.

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