When you consider rear-wheel drive automobiles, Honda will not be the primary model that involves thoughts. You’ve got acquired the NSX, obtainable in rear or all-wheel drive, and the S2000, their celebrated rear-wheel drive roadster, however even Honda’s pickup truck, the Ridgeline, is obtainable in front-wheel drive. And, credit score the place it is due, Honda has made a number of the finest, most enjoyable to drive, and coolest front-wheel drive automobiles of all time, notably their long-running Civic household, which have at all times dealt with superbly.
However you surprise what they’re leaving on the desk by neglecting rear-wheel drive choices. How would a Honda CR-V or an Accord deal with in a rear-wheel configuration? What in regards to the Civic Kind R transformed to really feel extra like a pony automotive? Or how about this: what if the NSX was actually, actually tiny and reasonably priced? Okay, you in all probability by no means requested that final query, however Honda had a solution all the identical, within the type of their little Beat.
A Look At Honda’s Three-Cylinder Mini-NSX
1991 Honda Beat Efficiency Specs
Engine
0.7-Liter 3-Cylinder
Energy
64 hp
Torque
44 lb-ft
Prime Pace
84 mph
0-60
13 Seconds
The Honda Beat was a kei automotive produced from 1991 to 1996, starting its growth beneath Italian automotive design agency Pininfarina, which went on to promote the physique design to Honda. These two corporations had already discovered some success prior to now, collaborating on the Honda HP-X idea automotive, which might not see manufacturing, however would result in the event of the NSX (even the names are related, the Honda Pininfarina eXperimental vs. New Sportscar eXperimental).
Each of those vehicles share a right away parental lineage, so it is no stretch to recommend that the Beat was created because the NSX’s child brother. With its sporty physique type, mid-engine configuration, and kei automotive proportions, the Honda Beat is an ideal instance of east-meets-west automotive design, a European really feel in a distinctly Japanese bundle.
A Tiny Automobile With An Engine To Match
In case you’re anticipating NSX-tier efficiency out of this automotive, you are going to be sadly upset. The Beat was designed to be a trendy, enjoyable, budget-friendly metropolis automotive. To be extra particular, the kei automotive class exists as a result of vehicles are taxed by weight in Japan. The Beat was Honda’s try at constructing a funds automotive that did not look or really feel like a nerdy funds automotive.
The engine was Honda’s E07A MTREC (Multi Throttle Responsive Engine Management) – an inline-three with a person throttle-body on every cylinder. It is spectacular that the Beat was in a position to get 64 horses out of this tiny little hamster wheel, however there’s solely a lot you are able to do with seven tenths of a liter of gasoline, however designated as a kei automotive, engine restrictions had been certainly strict. Not that you simply’d need to go over 100 mph in a road-legal bumper automotive within the first place. Effectively, perhaps you do, however you in all probability know higher than to attempt it. Basically, the automotive seemed sporty, and it was as nimble as you’d count on, nevertheless it wasn’t highly effective, not even for its measurement.
Gross sales began off sturdy within the early Nineties, and Honda produced the majority of the automotive’s 33,600-unit manufacturing run within the first 18 months or so. Then got here the Japanese recession, the beginning of the nation’s “misplaced a long time,” which was a interval operating from the Nineties to the 2000s or 2010s (relying on which economists you ask), when the GDP grew by a meager 1.14% yearly and wages went downhill. The automotive formally stayed in manufacturing for one more 4 or 5 years, however gross sales by no means bounced again, and the Honda Beat would go down as a one-generation mannequin.
How Would You Go About Importing A Thirty-4 Yr Outdated Kei Automobile?
The rule stands in america you could import absolutely anything you need after twenty-five years are up. For this reason you are seeing tiny, late-nineties mannequin Japanese vans sprouting like wildflowers in rural areas, and it is why your native JDM gearheads are much more obsessive about the 1998 Nissan Skyline GT-R. If you wish to purchase a Honda Beat, that is been authorized for a number of years now, and no one’s stopping you.
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If you wish to truly drive it round on public roads, that is an entire different story. These are the states the place the usage of kei vehicles is banned on public roads:
Oregon Nevada New Mexico Georgia South Dakota Iowa Michigan Maryland Pennsylvania New York New Jersey Georgia Connecticut Rhode Island Massachusetts Vermont Maine
Kei vehicles are kind of allowed in Colorado, Montana, Minnesota, Virginia, and West Virginia, however you may need to search for the native legal guidelines to see what the restrictions are, and do not forget that totally different counties might have totally different legal guidelines. Kei vehicles are “just about” authorized all over the place else, however there could also be particular pace limits and different laws you need to comply with. In Florida, as an example, you possibly can’t take them over 45 mph. Your finest wager is to seek out fellow kei automotive fanatics in your house state and ask them for recommendation, as a result of what it says on the books may not be what the native DMV enforces.
Even when kei vehicles are 100% authorized in your neck of the woods, they won’t be probably the most sensible each day driver should you spend a lot time on the freeway as that is not what they had been constructed to do. However, should you do most of your driving within the metropolis, the simplest method to go about importing a kei automotive is thru web sites like JDM Sports activities Classics, who will deal with all of the crimson tape and taxes for you as a part of the acquisition prices.
A Quick Automobile With A Lengthy Legacy
The Honda Beat would function founder Shoichiro Honda’s swan track, being the final automotive he permitted for mass manufacturing earlier than his passing in 1991, and it has gone on to have a surprisingly long-lasting legacy. Western curiosity within the Honda Beat was actually an affect within the growth of the European model of the Suzuki Cappuccino, and the profitable collaboration with Pininfarina led to a different roadster idea in 1995, the Argento Vivo, which might ultimately turn out to be the S2000.
The Beat’s engine went on to energy the Honda At the moment kei automotive from 1993 to 1998, and even the nameplate would discover a second life, as the fashionable Honda BeAT scooter, which is well-liked in India and the Philippines.
The Beat Goes On
Honda produced a follow-up mannequin within the S660 which stuffed the spot within the kei automotive section for the model from 2015-2022, and served because the Beat’s successor. The S660’s roots not solely hint again to the S2000, but additionally Honda’s early Nineteen Sixties roadster prototype, the S360, adopted by the S500, 600, and 800. The Beat was a cool little roadster that introduced European roadster aptitude to the Japanese funds automotive section, proving that you simply need not spend supercar cash to get an Italian-designed, mid-engine two-seater. The tradeoff is that it takes 13 seconds to rise up to 60 mph, and it would not go a lot quicker than that, however you gotta choose your battles in life.
