Honda revisits its fab back-catalogue with S660 Roadster
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Honda revisits its fab back-catalogue with S660 Roadster

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By ByronGoAuto - 29 April 2015

HONDA fans rejoice. Sports car fans rejoice. Heck, anybody with a pulse rejoice! Another inexpensive convertible has just been unleashed in Japan, and it may – just may – make it to Australia.

Welcome to the S660 – a lightweight, mid-engined, 660cc three-cylinder turbo tearaway two-seater with a low price and – crucially – rear-wheel drive.

Honda has form making bijou ragtops – as the Beat and S500/600/800 series of the ‘90s and ‘60s respectively prove.

Let’s cut to the chase. In this guise, the Honda probably won’t make it to our shores. But we hear that another, larger-engined, 1.0-litre version – still with a blown three-pot powerplant, though delivering 95kW instead of 63kW – is in the pipeline for export markets. Said to be called the S1000, the scuttlebutt says it will deliver almost twice the power of the cute-as-a-button open runabout you see here.

Ooh, we can hardly wait!

While that will hopefully happen sooner rather than later, right now, we can salivate over the S660 that at least 800 lucky customers in Japan can buy monthly.

The roof is made from cloth, is detachable, and stores in the boot rather than folds away, so it is a bit fiddlier than what an MX-5 owner might expect, for example.

The hot little Honda came about as a result of an in-house design competition four years ago, involving some 400 participants. The winner, a Ryo Mukumoto, was only 22 years old at the time, and was given just five days to flesh out his creation. That’s probably a massive part of this car’s visual appeal – it has the hallmark of one person’s vision. Like all great Hondas have in the past, including the legendary NSX.

Indeed, the hugely anticipated second-generation version of the latter seems to have influenced the S660’s front end styling, though the tiny roadster is still very much its own car. Additionally, not much at all has changed since it debuted in concept car guise at the 2013 Tokyo motor show.

The platform is said to be an all-new structure with aluminium and high-tensile steel for maximum strength and weight saving.

Built by Honda suppliers Yachigo Industry Company, which also make the brand’s other Kei cars such as the N-Box, the newcomer is truly petite. The tape measure says just 3395mm long, 1457mm wide and 1180mm high. Students of the Japanese auto industry will rightly conclude, therefore, that despite its sassy styling, this meets all Kei car criteria, including mass: the S660 tips the scales at a featherweight 830kg.

Honda uses a 660cc three-cylinder turbo channelling 63kW and 104Nm to the rear wheels, while weight distribution is 45/55 front/rear biased.

Snug but not cramped, the Honda’s interior is typical brand-contemporary, but still elegant and basic enough to appeal to fans of traditional inexpensive convertibles. A big tachometer dominates the instrumentation and the steering wheel is a minuscule 350mm diameter item for that hemmed-in, at-one-with-the-car feeling. A fabric roof is included, of course, but it is of the detachable variety rather than one that folds away neatly behind, as in the evergreen Mazda MX-5, and must be stowed away in the boot when alfresco motoring beckons.

Sited behind the rear seats for a 45/55 front/rear weight distribution, the 63kW 0.6-litre twin-cam turbo triple dishes out its power maximum at 6600rpm, while the 104Nm torque top comes in at 2600rpm. Note that the Honda’s redline starts at a stratospheric 7700rpm. What’s not to love about that! The rear wheels are turned via a six-speed manual or seven-step Continuously Variable Transmission, with the latter, adding only 20kg to the S660’s kerb weight.

Like all great Honda sports cars, this one has a mid-mounted engine, driving the rear wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox (or a CVT auto, but we’re ignoring that one).

Honda says plenty of high-strength steel has found its way into the compact convertible, which not only helps keep the kilos off, but strengthens the structure compromised by the lack of roof support. To that end, the subframe also uses steel as well as aluminium, resulting in stiffness that is said to exceed that of the S2000 of 1999. Steering is an electrically actuated rack and pinion mechanism, the front end consists of MacPherson struts, while the rear suspension features what’s described as a dual links. Brakes consist of 260mm discs.

Alongside a litany of electronic driver aids, such as stability and traction control, hill-start assist, emergency brake alert and available autonomous emergency braking, comes Honda’s ‘Agile Handling Assist’ technology; it regulates brake pressure to the inside front wheel for improved cornering capabilities.

The driving environment is snug but sporty, with two seats, a low seating position, and a fairly sparse dash.

Additionally, a passive new safety measure, dubbed ‘i-SRS’, has been introduced in the S660 – an  intelligent driver’s side airbag that holds its inflated pressure if required for longer than a regular unit, for added protection.

So what’s the price of all this Honda roadster goodness? In Japan, the S660 retails from just under $A22,000, generously undercutting the MX-5 (as it should), to help make the pint-sized sun-seeker a bit of a bargain. We reckon Honda won’t have any issue shifting those 800 units monthly.

The last convertible Honda made was the aluminium bodied S2000 – a 176kW 2.0-litre naturally aspirated premium two-seater with tricky handling.

The last time Honda offered a convertible was the S2000, announced in 1998 as a 50th anniversary present for itself. That was front mid-engined two-seater powered by a naturally aspirated 176kW/208Nm 2.0-litre VTEC four-pot screamer with a 9000rpm redline, capable of hitting 100km/h from standstill in 5.5 seconds flat.

Earlier that decade, however, came another ragtop that was far closer in concept the S660, called the Beat. Also a Kei-car-based machine, it too had a mid-mounted rear-drive specification, combined with Pininfarina styling. Produced from 1991 to 1996, the Beat was the last project to have been signed off by company founder and visionary, Soichiro Honda, who died the year of its release.

After decades of making motorbikes, Soichiro Honda introduced his first passenger car line – the S500 roadster. This is what the company is all about.

Of course, Mr Honda’s first passenger vehicle was the 1963 S500 roadster, driving the rear wheels via a 492cc four-cylinder engine featuring a four-speed manual gearbox. True to the brand’s motorcycle heritage, this car was famous for using a chain drive to the rear wheels. One year later, the 606cc S600 usurped it, while the S800 followed a little while later.

The S660 – and its hoped-for S1000 sibling – certainly have massive shoes to fill.

Byron Mathioudakis GoAuto.com.au

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