I Had A Memory Of A Honda Z600 That Used To Live Near Me So Now You have to Hear About It, Too

Back when I lived in Los Angeles, a city that has one of the greatest carscapes of any city in, hell I’m going to say it – the world – I used to navigate through my neighborhood by a mental map of the interesting cars around me. At my own home I had a Beetle and a Reliant Scimitar, so I was helping out if anyone else did this, and in a mile or so radius around my house there were Checker Marathons and a Citroën SM and some Fiat X1/9s, a Lancia, and more. It was surprisingly varied and rich! Included in this was the interesting car closest to me, a Honda Z600 Coupé.

The little yellow Z600 was just around the corner from my house, and sat in a driveway, immobile. I never actually saw it drive or even move, but I walked by to look at it often, as I was smitten, I talked to the owner about selling it multiple times, and they always said they would think about it, but nothing ever happened. They didn’t mind me coming by to peer at it, though, and occasionally squeeze the big rubber “scuba mask” bezel around the rear hatch which was very satisfying to squeeze.

I wanted to bite it, but I resisted. It wasn’t easy.

I mean, look at that incredible mass of black rubber! Who wouldn’t want to bite it? Also, dude, stop fighting over that frisbee or whatever. Just let her have it.

The Z600 (and it’s smaller-engined counterpart, the z360) were only in production between 1970 and 1974, but went through an interesting number of changes during that time, mostly because that was the fateful time in Honda’s history when the transition from air-cooled engines, a favorite of Honda founder Soichiro Honda, to liquid-cooled engines, which his engineers preferred, happened.

That’s why the Zs had two different grille designs over its life, and behind that grille were two different sorts of inline-twin transverse engines, both making 36 hp, but the earlier one cooled by air, the later by water. This period was a huge deal for Honda, with Soichiro Honda having to admit his role was no longer as an engineer, but the CEO.

Also fascinating about the Z600 is how it came in a version with a fixed (if pop-out) rear side glass like the car above, but you could get versions that were pillar-less hardtops, like the one in the topmost image or this one here, which features the only example of a double-window-length rain gutter I’ve ever seen:

That one above is a later production Z600, which you can tell because it lacks the lower spare tire compartment door seen on earlier cars, which I love.

You can see the spare tire compartment in the middle left there, along with other details like the foglamp-style front indicators, similar designs of which would later show up on the earliest Civics:

The Z600 was quite advanced in many ways, with an engine that would rev up to 9000 RPM! The packaging was clever and, while tiny, was fairly roomy.

The only strange thing, to my eyes at least, is the almost crude rear suspension with those big leaf springs. I mean, they certainly work, they just feel a bit out of place on a car like this.

Another fun detail are the door handles, which seem to just be Honda 1300 door handles rotated 90°. And I think those, rotated back to horizontal, would end up on the Civic later.

This, along with the N600 “sedan” version, were some of the earliest widely-exported Hondas, and were still sold at Honda motorcycle dealers, since a real Honda car dealership network wouldn’t appear until the Civic hit the scene in 1973. I really like this period of Honda, where they seemed like a company willing to experiment and try some exciting things. We tend to think of Honda as a rational, safe bet now, cars for people with reasonable minds, but things weren’t always like that.

Also, that woman is doing such a clean and tidy job of painting on that car! Even with that dude all up in her face. I’m impressed.