Report From Japan
REPORT FROM JAPAN
JACK YAMAGUCHI
TOKYO RACING CAR SHOW
The Tokyo Racing Car Show has become an important event in our motoring calendar. It has a modest small motorcycle section, but that is hardly comparable with the grandiose twowheeled displays of the industrysponsored Tokyo Motor Show. All four marques had to be content in a mezzanine corner of the huge, domed building with a few exhibits in each stand. (Bridgestone and Hodaka are export specialists, and refrain from all domestic events.)
Two important ’711/2 models, the Honda CB500 Four and the Kawasaki 350SS Three, were displayed. A CB500 was placed quite prominently on the Honda stand, but Kawasaki’s new sizzler was surreptitiously sandwiched by its two senior brethren, the Mach III and the revamped 650W1 Twin.
The 350SS Three is a fierce looking machine that even makes the bigger Mach III look docile. And it is offered at such a bargain price (about $633, ex-factory) which undercuts the CB500 tab by nearly $300. It should sell well to the younger set with yen to go.
Incidentally, Honda and Kawasaki copywriters are going in opposite directions, like their counterparts in the styling departments. Honda consciously plays down the performance side, not even mentioning a claimed top speed for their new Four. Their tune is, “500 for the quiet man,’’ while Kawasaki men boast, “Sorry to have kept you waiting-for 40 years!” Kawasaki naturally quotes a quarter-mile time of 13.6 sec.
Yamaha didn’t have anything new at the show, as their new reed valve HT90 Trail and AX 125 are scheduled to stay under dust covers for another month. But, a couple of interesting motocross specials, built by a former Yamaha racing man and now the closest chap to the Hamamatsu development department, were on display. The HT1-MX Noguchi Special is based on the piston port HT1 Trail, whose engine is tweaked up to a tune of 15 bhp at 10,500 rpm. The bigger Noguchi-san’s Special is based on the DTI, which now inhales mixture from a gigantic Mikuni VM30SC instrument and pumps out a claimed 30 odd bhp at 9000 rpm. Yamaha also had a historic water-cooled four-cylinder Grand Prix mount in its stand.
Suzuki was emphasizing motocross with the factory HR71 and an over-thecounter TM400 side by side. In the latest guise, the RH71’s 246-cc Single puts out 30 bhp at 7700 rpm. Ready to race, the bike scales 1 87 lb.
Miniest of all minibikes was shown by a Tokyo industrial design office. It is appropriately named “Big Elephant.” An accompanying spec board proudly proclaimed a maximum speed of 18 mph, capable of carrying one adult in superb comfort, but a 0-400 meter (lA mile) acceleration column was intentionally left blank. I am rather tempted to find it out myself, with a lunch box, maybe.
HONDA-SAN’S HEIR APPARENT
Mr. Soichiro Honda has stepped down from the presidency of Honda Research and Development Co., Honda’s subsidiary, which receives 3 percent of the parent company’s annual sales for research, design and development of all Honda products. Those range from stationary industrial power units, through familiar two-wheelers, to 200-mph-plus Grand Prix cars.
The old man will no longer commute to R&D, which has a reserved parking space for his Firebird, but will return to an executive suite in the Honda headquarters which he will share with Executive VP Fujisawa, who has also retired from the vice presidency of the R&D Co. These two men, one a technical genius and the other a financial wizard, will direct the destiny of Honda Motor Co. Honda pledges it will stay independent, despite hell, high water, Toyota or General Motors.
(Continued on page 88)
Continued from page 86
Many industrial and financial observers believe that this move by Honda and Fujisawa is indicative of their choice of the heir apparent to the presidency of Honda Motor Co. proper. 1 do not speculate on the future president of Honda Motor Co., as I see Mr. Honda will stay in the seat for many happy years to come. (At budding 65, he is still very young in physique and in heart.)
The Research and Development Co. is now headed by 44-year-old Kiyoshi Kawashima, the right-hand man to Honda-san since the onset of the company. Kawashima was in charge of Honda's earlier competition attempts, including its first Isle of Man TT assault.
There are already some signs of change in Honda’s product philosophy. Once a staunch believer in air cooling, Honda will soon revert to water cooling in its latest four-wheel offering, a new 360-cc car powered by a transverse two-cylinder engine, which is said to have nearly eliminated inherent imbalance. (A dynamic balancer of some sort is incorporated.)
MORE ON HONDA’S CLEAN ENGINE
Honda will offer “clean” engines in some of its wheeled products beginning in 1973. It’s a “Muskie Law Beater,” as our general press has hailed it, but R&D Chief Sugiura more humbly admits that it’s a step toward that right direction. The unit centers on a CVCC process in usual Honda-nese, or translated, Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion in an otherwise conventional reciprocal piston, poppet valve engine. (A current testbed engine is an N600 air-cooled two-cylinder car engine, which isn’t very different from your Honda Twin.) Honda’s approach is to have lean and rich layers of mixture coexisting in the combustion chamber in a state of swirl to control combustion progress, thereby minimizing those contradictory pollutants, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons. The CVCC chamber will be used in conjunction with Honda’s own mechanical fuel injection system.
CLUBMANS RACE & MX ROUND II
The All Japan Motorcycle Federation sanctioned two major competition events in a single month, and both attracted big fields. The Clubmans road race meeting had 260 entries on Fuji’s 1.32-mile track. Any big road race, be it on Suzuka or Fuji, has become a duel between two Big Ones, the Honda 750 Four and the Kawasaki Mach III. In the March 28 race, a Four piloted by Kohji Ota won handsomely. Actually, Akira Terui’s lone 350 Yamaha barely prevented this from becoming an all Honda event.
This Honda-Kawasaki rivalry on the track is a highly interesting development, and many predict, or hope, that a similar encounter will soon take place between the new CB500 Four, which is infinitely more suitable for this type of work, and the 350SS Three.
A fortnight after the Clubmans Race day, the other side of Fuji International Speedway was like the Tokyo Central during our infamous rush hours, with 725 young men astride their motocross mounts, waiting to compete in the second round of the All Japan Motocross Championship series. It is indeed credit to the organizers, MCFAJ, and their efficient Competition Chief Nishiyama, that so many competitors ran in a single day in an orderly manner. Scoreboards showed even mixtures of three twostroke marques, with Suzuki-mounted Katsumata winning the coveted semiexpert 250 trophy, and Tadao Suzuki stealing the senior 125 and 250 cups.
TEN MILLIONTH HONDA
Honda recently celebrated the manufacture of their 10,000,000th motorcycle at the Suzuka Plant. The ceremony was attended by Mr. Soichiro Honda, president of Honda, and other top level staff.
The Suzuka Plant is mainly designed to manufacture ultra-lightweight motorcycles in the 50 to 90cc class and is capable of building more bikes than any other single production facility in the world. Quite naturally, the Suzuka plant’s 10,000,000th product was a 50-cc Super Cub.
