What if Honda never changed models

[Ward]

So what if this was the what Honda autos still looked like ?

[Plumber]

"What's a Honda?"

[Michel Van]

yours to choose:
A: Honda wend bust in 1980s
B: Honda is today number One in Retro style Car, but not a major Car manufacture.

[Just Leo]

Don't forget the sports model.

[fastmongrel]

Even if Honda only ever produced 60s cars they would still be more fuel efficent and reliable than anything that rattles out of Detroit today

[Grey Wolf]

I've never seen a Honda older than an early Accord or Civic before. I guess there just weren't many in the UK. In the 1970s we had Datsun and Toyota as the Japanese brands; I don't really recall anything else, on 4 wheels that is!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

[NothingNow]

Originally Posted by Ward

So what if this was the what Honda autos still looked like ?

They probably couldn't be sold in most of the world, unless of course, certain agencies and organizations had decided that no, passive safety features outside the seatbelt and safety cage were unnecessary. Maybe we'd have pop-up hoods and smallish crumple zones, but that'd probably be it.

With modern engine tech, we'd be able to do a 50hp car much, much more efficiently and in a smaller displacement engine, with less weight.

Actually, with Disc brakes and modern structural engineering, this would be amazing for car guys.

[Shevek23]

A somewhat later, mini-station wagon version of one of these was the car I drove most often in high school. I forget what year it was but we got it used in 1981. At the time, the early 80s, one could clearly see that the contemporary Civic models were descended from its type. The new ones looked a lot better to my eye, but the old one looked good enough and worked quite well enough. And got good gas mileage.

I don't actually know about the lack of safety features--back then seatbelts were normal and airbags were not. Does this mean the oldest version shown had no safety glass even? I'm pretty sure ours did have that!

It's not clear to me then, NothingNow, whether you are referring to a bunch of new safety features such as airbags that have become standard in later decades but which no one expected to find in standard cars of the early 80s, or to elementary stuff that was standard when seatbelts were considered newfangled frills!

Anyway, I can see Honda never "changing models" in the sense of retaining the basic look and feel of the original while slowly upgrading this and that; that's just the kind of thing we expected. You can still buy a new Corvette or TransAm after all (well, I assume so!) or a Mustang, and see the clear kinship to the original early '60s or late '50s versions. Well as I said I saw Honda's new cars of the early 80s in a continuity with the one I drove and the first Civics I ever saw on the road, in the mid-70s.

It could be that these early models OP is showing are even pre-Civic, in which case--D'Oh!

[NothingNow]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

It's not clear to me then, NothingNow, whether you are referring to a bunch of new safety features such as airbags that have become standard in later decades but which no one expected to find in standard cars of the early 80s, or to elementary stuff that was standard when seatbelts were considered newfangled frills!

Yeah, I'm refering to the Nanny systems and current Active and Passive safety systems like Airbags, Stability Control, Traction Control and Lane Departure warning, plus all of the newer and stricter crash requirements that add mass and require more powerful, and thus less efficient engines, and at the end of the day don't do anything because the average driver, can at best be charitably called incompetent, lazy and dangerous, if not criminally negligent.