Honda Beat | Spotted
Keep your supercars; driving thrills don't come much purer than this
Hypercars. Or specifically, electric hypercars. Porsche last week announced its striking new Mission X concept, seemingly inspired by the 919 Street – which was cruelly revealed to us after being canned – only with the complex four-cylinder hybrid powertrain from the Le Mans car ditched in favour of an all-electric powertrain. Face-melting acceleration is all but guaranteed and, should Porsche choose to actually build the thing, it won't come as a huge surprise if Porsche retakes the production car lap record around the Nordschleife with it. Not least because it's specifically targeting it.
What isn’t a dead cert, however, is if it’ll rewarding to drive. Of course, if anyone can make an electric car fun to drive, it’s Porsche. But my experience of driving ultra-powerful EVs is that once the initial excitement and/or shock of having your organs rearranged the moment you stamp on the right pedal, the novelty wears off after just a handful of traffic light drags. And when you break down what it takes to achieve pure driving nirvana – and I can’t be the only one who thinks this – speed doesn’t come anywhere near the top of the list. It’s about engagement, feedback and maintaining momentum. All things the Honda Beat excels in.
That’s right, I really do believe an old Japanese Kei car costing £5,995 can be more rewarding to drive than a multi-million-pound EV hypercar. Heck, I think it’d be more of a hoot than most turbo hybrid supercars, too. This is a 760kg car that’s no bigger than a mosquito, which means it’s tailored-made for tearing up the sort of narrow country lanes. The sort that is usually a nightmare to navigate in most modern, high-performance sports or supercars.
Good job it’s a featherweight, mind, because there’s precious little grunt to move it along. Being a Kei car, the Beat produces just 64hp from a 656cc three-cylinder engine. Unlike other Kei car heroes such as the Suzuki Cappuccino and Autozam AZ-1, there’s no turbo assistance here. So in true Honda style, you won’t unlock the full amount of poke until you hit 8,100rpm, just 400rpm shy of the redline. Gutless? Sure. Yet there’s a satisfaction in keeping the engine in the torque band as you navigate a set of switchbacks, maintaining momentum as you go. Not very quickly, admittedly, but that won’t matter when your antics are soundtracked by a surprisingly tuneful three-pot thrum.
Worried that a Kei car won’t have the same kerb appeal as a car at the complete opposite end of the performance and price spectrum? Don’t be, because the plucky Beat will turn just as many heads as a Bugatti Chiron. Possibly. Honda built tens of thousands of Beats, but they were never officially sold in the UK and few have brought them over here privately – probably down the hefty import fees for a car worth little more than a pack of Sun Maid raisins in its home market. Thankfully someone went through the hassle of getting this one over to the UK so you don’t have to deal with the tiring (though ultimately rewarding) import process yourself.
You also won’t have to handle the very recent, and presumably very costly, engine replacement that occurred due to light damage sustained after a timing belt failure. The current engine has around 37,000 miles on the clock, though the original motor is included in the sale just in case you fancy having a stab at fixing it yourself. You know, for ‘matching numbers’ and all that. It’s clearly had a lot of love and attention put into it as a post-lockdown restoration project, and now it’s ready for someone to use it the way Honda intended: thrashed along a country road and getting nowhere near the national limit while doing so.
SPECIFICATION | HONDA BEAT
Engine: 656cc three-cylinder
Transmission: five-speed manula, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 64@8,100rpm
Torque (lb ft): 48@7,100rpm
MPG: 39
CO2: N/A
Year registered: 1992
Recorded mileage: 47,000
Price new: N/A
Yours for: £5,995
Still, it's an interesting little thing, and it would be fun rebuilding the old engine and seeing if you could squeeze a bit more grunt out of it. It would likely still be a no from me though as, by all accounts, they're pretty small inside.
I remember reading an interview with the young lady owner of one of these in Autocar back in the 90s.
Visiting London a few months later, the lady in the Beat drove past. What were the chances of that?
I knew you’d all be fascinated.
Main concern for me would be as per my eunos, rust, Japanese cars of this era seem to like rusting, and JDM cars aren't rust proofed.
It doesn’t need a supercharged Chevy small block or anything like that obviously, but with 150bhp or so I bet that would be hell of a little thing.
It doesn’t need a supercharged Chevy small block or anything like that obviously, but with 150bhp or so I bet that would be hell of a little thing.
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