1967 Honda S800 Review [Classic Japanese Roadster]

[Music] um [Music] [Music] oh [Music] hi guys i'm so excited today because i've got hold of something very special one of the first cars to be produced by this actual manufacturer yes this is the honda s800 and i first saw one of these when i was a teenager back in the 1980s and some honda showroom somewhere i was blown away by how something so small so sporty and so utterly cool could have come out of japan in fact this was the last in the series of s series and s roadsters to come out of japan remember from honda in fact remember honda was known for making motorbikes as a car manufacturer was still fledgling it only started producing cars in 1963. this was shown at the tokyo motor show in 1965. they started producing this in 1966 to 1970 making about 11 and a half thousand of these of course it followed the s500 and the s600 now nothing was produced after this car all the way until the awesome s2000 about 30 years later so quite a gap there now this car was officially imported to the uk as well between 67 and 70 about 1500 of them were sold here this car actually belongs to honda they bought it in 2016 and it went uh underwent a restoration it was a sympathetic restoration not concourse condition to be honest it's authentic and really the only issues on it were some rust and some wear and tear mechanically it was fine well you know what it is a honda after all right now right now as an investment these are a great idea because a couple of years ago you could pick up something like this for twenty thousand pounds something like this today would cost you well over 30 000 pounds and the top examples are close to 40 000 pounds now at 53 years old it's slightly older than i am and as you can see from the scale proportion representation that you can see on your screen it's a meter and a bit longer than i am tall yeah this thing is tiny it's about 3.3 meters long 1.4 meters wide and 1.2 meters tall in fact at 6 foot 2 i'm not even sure if i can fit in it and drive it but drive it i must because it is an absolute gem of a little engine 0.8 liters as the name would imply but to be exact 791 cc it's a four cylinder double overhead uh camshaft twin choke carburetors it's basically derived from a motorcycle engine because that's what honda did at the time redlined at 10 000 rpm you get 70 brake horsepower at 8 000 rpm and you get 49 pounds foot of torque at 6000 rpm and that drives the rear wheels through a a four-speed manual gearbox um it's very light 771 kilograms so it's about 91 brake horsepower per ton so you get 0 to 60 acceleration of 13.6 seconds and it manages to reach 100 miles per hour top speed okay that does sound pathetic by today's standards but back then it would have been very acceptable besides it's all about how it feels from behind the steering wheel and i tell you what after 35 years i'm gonna find out but before i do that make sure that you're subscribing to youtube.com forward slash brown car guy make sure you follow me on browncarguy.com and on all the social media that's facebook instagram twitter and even ticktock to search my hashtag which is hashtag browncarguy you can also if you enjoy my content support me and you can do that by heading over to patreon.com forward slash brown car guy cool let's get into this [Music] you know what just for a laugh let's actually look at the practicality it does have a boot there's the petrol filler cap over there now you open the boot by pressing on that and there you go look at that it's beautiful isn't it look at all the chrome on here this is absolutely gorgeous now this is clever you see this little clip here when that goes up it automatically falls back no electronics simple physics mathematics gravity does the job of holding that boot up it just automatically goes into that slot and latches the boot it's okay you know and they've nicely finished it come and have a look they have nicely finished it in terms of uh obviously it's been repainted and stuff and you can literally see the fuel tank right there um it's okay i mean what more do you need i mean and it's a tiny car so all things considering that's not bad so to close it you just pull that out again let it lie loose and then drop it nice satisfying fad there how satisfying is it for me to find out if i can actually fit in there you're about to see before i get in just have a look at this interior it is so beautifully presented i mean obviously it has been restored but these seats are fantastic really nicely trimmed very thin rim steering wheel there a bit of patina on this steering wheel as on the dashboard but it's all in one piece it's all fine classic dials over there and this tiny stubby gear lever there look at the mirror look at this talking of tiny let's see this is the moment of truth door opens wind-up windows and moving my feet in individually stretching it out oh wow the steering wheel is on the big side but by stretching out my feet there's enough room there and i'm in i'm actually in so this is pretty cool so there you go and there's the handbrake is there what we've got we've got little ashtray remember when cars used to have ash trays in it little honda bags there um it's got a heater in it you've got um an amp meter fuel gauge temperature gauge that is your tachometer rpm and this is your speedometer this is the indicator that's the horn right there and the ignition key is there here you have a sort of armrest center console which is obviously been re-trimmed with a little compartment in it as well and um i believe that there is some space here there's a little tray back here actually interestingly enough to put stuff on and over here you've got a quite capacious glove box you get more than a few gloves into that glove box i tell you that much but yeah little mirror that i'll take getting used to and only one wing mirror on the side here which can just be adjusted like that it's time to take it for a drive the first time i started it it just jutted a little bit but now it's kind of warmed up again old cars i need warming up right so select first hand brake off and the clutch is weird on this one so the guys told me that they need to oh here we go we're moving off actually there you go so the clutch is weird because it's very heavy but it doesn't need to go all the way down it only needs to go a little bit of the way down in fact if you push it all the way down it stalls the guy said they're going to adjust it but at some point but not right now but it's actually quite easy the first to second shift is not a problem at all it's a really short little gear lever race w is literally like a switch rather than the gear lever actually feels like a toggle switch as well so i mean i'm pretty sure we're in second and we're struggling to get up this little hill that is 70 horsepower so you know there we go 49 pounds foot of torque all right there you go got to remember that um old gearboxes you need to just give it a little bit of a gap between changes but here we are and it's moving good visibility that's for sure all round visibility is not even an issue but oh you know what actually once you start moving that's an indicator right there look at that and i have to stop the brakes you know the brakes aren't as bad as i was expecting them to be i'm getting used to this already it does take a little the clutch though you have to turn the indicator off by yourself you have to get used to it a little bit once you do you start to adapt to the clutch and the way it feels but i'll tell you what the steering is really light it really gets up to revs quickly doesn't it that's four that's basically top gear but actually fourth is like an overdrive on this really so it's kind of gone completely flat so put it back ah so yeah then it's more interesting we're still doing less than 4000 rpm believe it or not i mean yeah you don't need a lot of rpm although you know it's it's one of those cars that is supposed to be revved hard but you don't actually need a lot of rpm for it to be going places having said that it's an old car it's 50 plus years old so i don't want to use up too many of those revs i might just close the wind-up windows to avoid my hat flying off and uh yeah so cruising quite easily now at 30 miles an hour this is really good okay let's pick this up again when we find some clear roads so we found a nice little road and we're motoring along a little bit now and i still haven't you know i've got it up to about five i think is the most i've done and uh but you know that's plenty to be honest one of the things is there's a little car quite a flat solid ride there's a bit of rattling and stuff going on obviously um i'm in fort already run out of gears and of course there's a lot of movement there's a lot of jumping up and down you can feel everything but the steering too very light very light too light i would like it to be meteor you know non-power assisted completely manual but when you're moving it's quite light at lower speeds it's obviously quite hefty but not too difficult for parking or anything like that but plenty of feel plenty of feedback i can feel what the tarmac is doing i can feel what the car is doing the whole car even though i just there's a bit of play in it but i can still feel the movement of the car and you know it's a lot of fun because there's a lot of tactile visceral sensations and feelings coming through this car so even though we're only doing like 40 we're not even doing the legal limit on this road looking behind is always a bit of an issue so a bit of a bend around here and uh you know just keep it in third and get yeah i mean it's just no issue at all it's tiny car tiny footprint and you can actually power through a little corner and it's very happy to do that no problem as well the gear change is just working so well i mean yes you have to be very precise with it and you have to get out of the mindset that it might be a six-speed or a five-speed it's not there's literally only four speeds but yeah just throwing it through this corner now absolutely grips tightly no understeer no oversteer absolutely sorted really really composed you know what actually a really drivable car considering this is you know 53 years old you know again you know loose surface there but holds on really well no an issue i could just feel the front maybe slightly losing grip but not really too much of an issue again bumpy roads so you really start to fly out your seat but boy it is so much fun to drive and that's not even using its full potential but you know and it just you know the more you do rev the more the sound goes a bit crazy and that's when you start to get that motorcycle sensation out of it doesn't not that it sounds like a motorcycle engine it definitely sounds like a car engine but a real buzzy thing there you go a little bit of a bump there and you get the whole thing rattling gotta keep my hat on you know and again the slight uphill so we'll give it a little bit of a revs and up through here but oh man so good utterly planted very secure you know you can see why there was actually they used to take these racing as well it's absolutely fantastic what an awesome experience and again it's so small that it's so easy to thread through these little roads you know it's never ever a concern you know tight corners no problem a little bit there on the brakes slightly tight a little bit a little bit of understeer there at lower speed but not at the the faster sweepers not an issue the brakes you have to really go down to the bottom to get the full power of the brakes but having said that they're not as bad as i thought but having driven some older cars you do tend to get used to the fact that all the cars are braking you have to radio ahead but not in these ones they're absolutely fine just nice to give it a little bit of revs to just match the uh the downshifts a little bit but it works really well i am making use of fourth gear because again i want to be sympathetic to the mechanicals of this car and not really go into the hierarchy long although to be honest it does feel like it wants to you know you really get that sensation that is like you know let's go higher let's go higher but the thing is we're doing a fair old speed as it is this is great fun very satisfying and you know they say don't meet your heroes but i think in this case you know you're it's okay to meet your heroes because [Music] it makes a fair bit of noise you know everything is holding steady the temperature and all of that no problem at all everything is staying quite cool [Music] yeah really good bit of driving there really really good visibility again not an issue because you know you just look over your shoulder and there is what an absolute joy and it's what a great experience has been to try something that's uh all a little bit older than i am let's be honest you know um and find it to be so relatable so relevant still now and one of the things about this car of course is that you know naturally aspirated non-assisted in every sense you have to look around you know electronics know nothing and that sense of old-schoolness in an era where you know we're turning to computers for everything including everything that we do with our cars it's so refreshing to get into something like this and know that you know you can still drive it you can still feel it you can still feel its relevance you can still use it effectively i mean to be honest like if this was my car and if i got a little bit more used to it i could see myself using this probably a lot more than i should do given its classic status and its value so in that sense quite a usable little thing and again so enjoyable to drive i mean we're coming up to some corners and it relishes corners it absolutely does you know and the thing is that you're not going that quickly you're not breaking the speed limits you know in other in modern cars you have to be going so much quicker to be having you know this level of fun and in this one you're really not i mean you know i'm i'm barely doing just over 30 miles an hour that's it and you can see the size of the grin on my face it's completely disproportionate to the speed limit that i'm in absolutely brilliant so there you go there is a review of this absolute icon from japan the honda s800 it's been my dream to drive this car for you know over 35 years so to actually be able to do it today is an absolute joy an absolute pleasure an absolute blast literally i hope you enjoyed that review catch you again soon in the next one hope you enjoyed that video if you did make sure you're subscribing to youtube.com forward slash brown car guy and hit the bell icon and turn on notifications so you don't miss any of my videos whilst you're at it subscribe to browncarguy.com and follow me on social media by just searching for my hashtag that's on instagram facebook twitter and even on tiktok if you love my content then 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Channel: Brown Car Guy

Views: 1,606

Rating: 4.7966104 out of 5

Keywords: 1967 Honda S800, Honda, classic car, vintage, old car, cool, rare collectible, jdm, japanese sportscar, japan, sportscar, car review, Cars, review, test drive, Road test, BrownCarGuy, Car Journalist, Car Blogger, Car Videos, Automotive, Motoring

Id: hPwXjru9N7Y

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021