At 03:00 PM 1/3/02 -0800, dana nojima wrote:
>Michael,
>
>Are you located in So. Cal? I remember seeing a S600 in a dealership in
>the San Franando Valley years ago. This was red (what else?) and had the
>chain drive.
>Dana Nojima
Dana,
I am located in Corvallis, Oregon as is the Honda dealership. They have had
the S600 on the floor there for years, and I have never seen it move.
On an interesting side note, I used to work for our local Nissan
dealership, and one of the "old-timers" used to tell a story of Honda's
attempt to bring their little roadsters into the USA in the late sixties.
According to him, a shipload of left-hand drive S600/S800s were unloaded at
the port in Portland (or Vancouver, WA) intended for the US market. The
cars were built just before the first DOT regulations for crash safety (I
would guess this would be 1967/8) and they were determined not to be legal
for the US market. After sitting in port while the lawyers wrangled the
topic in court, they were eventually loaded back onto the ship, to be sent
back to Japan. According to my source, once the ship was clear of Astoria,
the poor little Honda roadster's were pushed over the side of the ship into
the ocean. I guess it was easier to dump them into the ocean and write them
off as a loss, than exporting them to another market.
I have never been able to confirm if the story was true or not, but when
ever I think of the S-series Honda's I always think about the "lemmings" story!
Michael Spreadbury
1966 Datsun Roadster (with SR20DE power!)
/// datsun-roadsters@autox.team.net mailing list
|