The unseen Honda collection

Thu, 07 Jan 2010

IN AN UMARKED warehouse in Torrance, California, lies a collection of classic Honda cars and motorcycles from the past four decades - most have never been seen by public eyes.

The collection was started by a former executive of American Honda, Tom Elliott, Honda USA's executive vice president for sales, John Mendel, tells the New York Times.

“The problem was, we kept turning up more and more significant models that we couldn’t let go of,” said Mr. Mendel. We just kept parking them in this warehouse. We kept expanding the warehouse. Pretty soon, we just ran out of room.”

Among the plethora of four-wheel exotica, lurks a variety of the company's key motorcycles, including the ubiquitous Super Cub; Honda says that 60 million Cubs have been produced, making it the best-selling vehicle of all time. a dual-purpose 250 Scrambler, an original 4-cylinder CB750, also take pride of place; the latter helped establish Japan’s credibility as a maker of modern superbikes.

Mendel is keen to point out the fact that motorcycles were Honda's starting point:

“A lot of people don’t remember that Honda was first a motorcycle company. Cars didn’t come along until sometime later,” he said.

By Visordown News