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!
