Today’s Nice Price or No Dice S600 is the predecessor to the first model Honda sought to sell in the U.S., only to abandon the plan when engineers discovered it couldn’t traverse the steep hills of San Francisco. Let’s see if this private import project has a price that’s on the level.
A popular sub-segment of the YouTube automotive world is the “first wash in X-number of years!” video. Deep cleaning and detailing of long-forgotten or well past their sell-by date cars is highly attractive to many YouTube viewers, and has led to channels like AMMO NYC amassing over 2 million subscribers to date.
By all appearances, the 2004 Panoz Esperante GT we looked at yesterday would be an excellent candidate for one of these deep dive buds-with-suds videos, as it looked to be dusty as all get out. Aside from that and a pair of patches of denuded paint on the hood, the Panoz appeared to be in solid shape. A $13,500 asking price had a number of you ready to fill the five-gallon and squeeze out a sponge or two, and that led to the Panoz pulling out a solid, if narrow, 52% ‘Nice Price’ win.
A first for Honda
OK, let’s just be clear at the outset: today’s 1965 Honda S600 roadster is going to need a bit more than a foam canon and some swirl remover to look its best. This is a total project car that needs pretty much everything cleaned, rebuilt, hammered out, or replaced to be viable once again. That said, it seems mostly complete and arguably is interesting enough to make the work worthwhile.
Ford sold a lot of Model Ts back in the day, and Volkswagen once pumped out Type 1 Beetles like nobody’s business. Honda, though, has both companies beat in sales, and it accomplished that feat with two wheels, not four. With over 100 million units produced, Honda’s Super Cub motorcycle is the world’s most popular motor vehicle.
More amazingly, the Super Cub is just one piece of Honda’s portfolio, as the company today builds everything from portable generators to business jets. Its automotive operations didn’t even start until the early 1960s with the debut of the T360 light truck, which was immediately followed by a little and lithe sports car series, beginning with the S500. That model begat the larger-engined S600 and eventually the S800. None of these models was offered for sale in the U.S., although a federalized version of the S800 was created, only to be shelved after testers found the hilly streets of San Francisco too taxing for the car’s still-tiny motor.
Back on the chain gang
Honda drew heavily on its motorcycle experience in developing the S-series cars. Power for the S600 comes from a DOHC inline four cylinder displacing 606ccs and fed through a quartet of Keihin side-draught carburetors. As fitted, the engine specifications are 57 horsepower and an 8,500-rpm redline. This is a water-cooled engine, a significant departure from its bike engine predecessors. Behind that wet and wild four is a four-speed manual transmission driving a Salisbury axle, which in turn drives a pair of enclosed chains that also serve as suspension arms. The front suspension uses torsion bars, and there are drum brakes on all four wheels.
The seller states that this S600’s engine spins but suffers low compression in all four cylinders, so it won’t catch and run. That means a full rebuild, but at least all the parts appear to be present and accounted for, save for the small radiator, which isn’t in the car or in the pile of extra parts that will evidently come with the sale.
Putting it all together
Per the seller, they have amassed a collection of Honda gaskets and replacement piston rings (fun fact: Soichiro Honda, the company’s founder, got his start making piston rings for Toyota). Those parts, along with an extra instrument panel and some engine and trim pieces, should help make the car’s restoration less frustrating.
The car is rusty in several places and has a sizable dent in the nose above the grille. The folding top is present but appears to be barely holding on and will need to be replaced. The upholstery is intact enough to serve as templates for new vinyl and carpeting. Having the doors held closed by a tenuously stretched bungee cord is a nice touch, but hopefully the locks are hanging around somewhere. There is no title, but the car will come with a bill of sale, which the seller claims is all that is needed in Alabama, where the car currently resides.
A passion project?
The asking price for this project Honda is $5,900 obo, and yes, it will need to be towed to its next resting place… er, spa of rejuvenation. Now, before we get into whether or not that is a fair price tag, let’s take two things into account. The first is that this is an appreciably rare car, not just as a private import of a model never sold here, but as one of fewer than 12,000 cars ever built. The second factor is that these are quite expensive when not needing full restoration, and, as with this S800 on Facebook Marketplace, they might be when they do.
With all that in mind, what’s your take on this S600 project and that $5,900 asking? Does that feel like a deal to get your hands dirty? Or is this car too far gone to ask so much for the opportunity to bring it back?
You decide!
Atlanta, Georgia, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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