Honda: F1, bikes and, er, people carriers...
Every self-respecting car manufacturer, it seems, has its own museum. After all, if you don't have your own lavish hall in which to showcase your glorious history, how will anybody know you've got one?
So, hot on the heels of Chris-R's report from his visit to the museum by BMW Welt, PH brings you some images from the Honda Collection Hall, snapped while we sneaked an hour away from the tight schedule of our recent Japanese trip to visit Mugen.
Famous Hondas share space with oddities like...
The Honda Collection Hall is an imposing four-storey building inside the grounds of the Honda-owned Twin Ring Motegi race circuit. In it is housed a fine and eclectic collection of historic and modern Honda road cars, racing cars and motorbikes - 80 per cent of which are still in full working order.
Everything is there, from the first product to wear a Honda badge - an engine you could mount to a push-bike - to a particularly fine collection of Honda's Formula One history, both as an engine supplier and as a constructor.
...this, the first product to wear a Honda badge
There are also some peculiar non-Honda gems - A Curtiss Special racer built by founder Soichiro Honda in 1924, for example, or a Cooper F1 car that Honda bought as a research vehicle for its own F1 programme in the 1960s.
It really is a fascinating place. If you're ever in the area, we urge you to give it a look. Apologies for the poor quality of the images - more to do with the snapper's lack of talent (yours truly) than the camera's inadequacies.
The Cooper F1 bought as a testbed...
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...to help Honda develop one of these...
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...Which, in turn, gave rise to these
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The 1924 Curtiss Special built by Soichiro Honda
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And the rest of the collection...