Honda History


EK9turbo

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Paul Frere, the distiguished Belgian journalist and le mans 24hr race winer of the day paid tribute to Honda's policy of movig its engineers from racing to production activities and back again, and commented how readily racing experience was reflected in its ow products.
"Honda was the first manufacturer in the world to manufacture a marketable car with a fully detoxed engine developing over 100bhp per litre, and runing reliably and durably at more than 8,000rpm. Six years Supremacy in Formula One gained Honda the world's respect and a place among the 'noble' makes".

Honda won 23 Gran Prix, one Drivers' world chamionship and two constructors world championships with Williams in the short time between 1984 and 1987. Frank Williams said that Honda brought a new approach to Formula One which was the acceptance only of excellance and technical supremacy.
"Honda's method of working was new, as with their approach to the many problems encounteredon the way to wining in F1. Honda's engineers had a special structure of management" and communication, a special attitude to success and were entirely unafraid of hard work.

Honda moved to McLaren from 1988-1992 and won 44! more gran prix and the constructors' and drivers' titles Four years in a row, a run of sucess uprecidented in modern Gran Prix racing.

Ron Dennis, managing director of McLaren International spoke about the dedication and technical brilliance of the japanese Honda engineers ad mechanics which even adversaries like admired.
Luca Montezemolo, prsident of Ferrari spoke of the similarities between Honda and Ferrari, both founded by extraordinary Individuals who loved motor racing and were committed to technical innovation although, it has to be added, the differences spoke for themselves; only one company was dominating F1 at the time.

In 1983 Jonathon Palmer won the European F2 championship with a Ralt-Honda car again, as as with Brabham in 1965 the car simply Overwhelmed the opposition, scoring 12 consecutive victories from the seventh race of 1983 season to the sixth of 1984.

Honda Turbocharged F1 engines:

Ok honda supplied Turbocharged engines to...
*Lotus Honda
*McLaren Honda (Now McLaren Mercedes has derrived from McHonda)
*Williams Honda

1,497cc Turbocharged V6 that created 675bhp Reliably on a conservative tune.


Turbocharged F1 engines were eventually banned as the regulating body, the FIA; said it was gettig too dangerous.
From the words of one of the Honda powered car drivers... "Press the throttle down half way, and these nothing, press it down an inch further and theres just too much"
Oversteer was a huge problem when drivers were trying to gently 'feed' the power on, as when the turbos spooled somtimes it'd get very lairy, very fast.

In 1988 the regulations changed and 3x teams of engineers at the Tochigi research and development centre (same place in middle of tha Japanese test track that makes the NSX) were working on what to decide to provide for the last season of the turbo era. They had the choice of a new 3.5litre V10, or to continue with the 2.5bar-restricted 1.5 litre V6 turbo. With a history in turbo F1 of convincing superiority, their descision to stick with the turbo for one more season was vindicated, although work on the new V10 went on just the same. For the various Honda teams there was even a choice of turbo engines, the XE2 versionprovided superior economy whereas the XE3 provided better top end pull, and they could be changedover as required to suit circuits where fuel economy was vital or sheer thrust was necessary.
Unfortunatly in the course of that season, rivalry between the team drivers became acute. The French press was alarmed thatProst seemed to be getting less powerful engines than Senna - it looked like the only explanation for senna showing such speed. The speculation became so intense that Jean-Mrie Balaestre, the (French!) president of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA,the F1 regulating body) sent a formal letter to Tadashio Kume (who was at the time head of engineering), demanding that he ensures both drivers had identical cars!! lol

Honda was incredulous at the very idea and shrewdly published Kume's reply:
"I believe that motor sports should be conducted in the spirit of fair play and safety,in order toobtain the interest and emotional involvment of the spectators and people concerned. honda Motor Co Ltd sees fairness as the highest requirement of its philosophy for conducting business and sets this quality as an ideology in its corporate dealings."
kume never heard complaints from Balaestre again.lol A Honda spokesman put it more simply at a press conference "We would be quite prepared to line up four engines and let the drivers make the choice if thats what they would like."


basically this french guy didnt believe that it was in Senna's skills as a driver that made him surpass the competition.

Ron Dennis was more robust and demanded an apology from the FIA on discovering that Balaestre telephoned the Suzuka circuit during practise for the Japanese GP, commanding race officials to dismantle Prost's gearbox after the french driver complained of stiff gearselectio.

Dennis refused therafter to have any inspections of all of his Honda powered cars except for the verification of race regulations.

in the end the results spoke for themselves as they did again in 1989 when Honda's V10 (that was shown at the 87' Tokyo Motor show) went into the back of the new McLaren. The Turbo era ended in 1988 bringing the 3.5 litre NA engine. (max size allowed)

Ford and Ferrari wend for V12s and Renault for the Honda V10. it was a measure of Honda's comitment to winning that its V10 was race ready by October 88'! The racing dept. was still very determined not to be caught unprepared and the new unit was already fuel efficient, powerful and reliable after months of exhaustive testing at Suzuka with the McLaren test driver Emmanuele Pirro.
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by the japanese GP of 88. Renaults Engine was only just installed in a car for the first time, ferraris' was months behind schedule, Lamborghini's wasn't ready to go into a car AT all! and the Ford-Cosworth was scarecly past the design stage.

by contrast Honda had eight a totolof EIGHT RA109E (see pic Ive put below) engines ready, two for each race car, then a spare and two more for emergencies.
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There is so much good info in this book Im not gonna write it all. i justthought that that extract above was testament to Honda's organisational skills andSenna's pure skill.
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'Light As a V8 with te Power of a V12 Was Hondas promise to the McLaren designer for the start of the non turbo F1 era in 89.


McLarens Trophy room alone. (remember how many races they won with other companies in F1! this is just one of a handful of brimming trophey rooms)

Honda's Production Turbo Motorbike. Turbocharged imbroglio. Uprated from the 500, the CX650 fulfilled the promise of the turbo with 100bhp!! at 8000rpm. it did a 'thrilling' 135mph. The bike was only made for a few years as a great issue was tat when it was used in the rain, water splashing through the radiator ad onto the turbo units' housing made it literally shatter to pieces with the raiwater cooling it too fast unevenly. I havent ever seenone of these in person but damn I'd love to ride one; I'd guess they're pretty rare now.

Honda's S800
Their sportscar of 1967. £779 at the time. it had a 791cc engine that rev'd safely to 11,000 rpm and made 70bhp at 8000rpm. giving it a volumetric efficiency of 88.5bhp per litre. Some car manufacturers today struggle to acheive this, that honda acheived in the late 60's. Honda's quality ad reliability was unreivalld. It was not a great sucess though as most people stuck to the brittish models like the Austin healey and the MG Midgets.
In contrast the 1275cc MG midget was strugglig to make 50bhp at 4,500rpm with its cast ironpushrod engine that threatened to blow itself asunder 6000rpm.

Honda showing their inginuity bending the rules for motorbike racing, here is an article from Honda's great history book...


People are saying FI doesnt belong on Honda but in reality, Soichiro Honda, in the late eighties as 'supreme advisor' advised Nobuhiko kawamoto (Who became president from june 1990 after the retirement of Honda President Tadashi Kume) the NA route because he belived that they needed to master volumetric efficiency (hp/litre) on NA engines before they jumped into turbos for production cars.
Nobuhiko Kawamoto was one of Honda's engineering masterminds, he played a key role at Honda R&D from 1976 to 1989. Kawamoto developed the turbo F1 engines of the day, these were engines like the MP4/4 turbocharged RA168E engine a V6 1,497cc engine that rev'd to 11,800rpm and made 675bhp Reliably! Running on 84% tolulene and 16% Heptane. *(same engine supplied to Williams-Honda F1 cars and a few others companies at the time).

When turbocharged F1 engines were banned Kawamoto was very dissapointed. "We were getting close to 1bhp per cc (!) at the end. Imagine what that could mean for a small production car - say 60bhp from an engine so tiny you could hide it anywhere." Said Kawamoto.
He wanted smaller displacement turbocharged engines in racing so that racing technology would be more directly applicable to road cars, and racing would be seen to be making a response to the environmentally conscious 1990s.

Now some people think/belive that turbochargers have no place on Honda engines (although allmotor Honda's are awesome by their own standards). If you share this view then heres somthing to think about...
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Soichiro Honda, in the late eighties as 'supreme advisor' advised Nobuhiko kawamoto (Who became president from june 1990 after the retirement of Honda President Tadashi Kume) the NA route because he belived that they needed to master volumetric efficiency (hp/litre) on NA engines before they jumped into turbos for production cars.
Nobuhiko Kawamoto was one of Honda's engineering masterminds, he played a key role at Honda R&D from 1976 to 1989. Kawamoto developed the turbo F1 engines of the day, these were engines like the MP4/4 turbocharged RA168E engine a V6 1,497cc engine that rev'd to 11,800rpm and made 675bhp Reliably! Running on 84% tolulene and 16% Heptane. *(same engine supplied to Williams-Honda F1 cars and a few others companies at the time).

When turbocharged F1 engines were banned Kawamoto was very dissapointed. "We were getting close to 1bhp per cc (!) at the end. Imagine what that could mean for a small production car - say 60bhp from an engine so tiny you could hide it anywhere." Said Kawamoto.
He wanted smaller displacement turbocharged engines in racing so that racing technology would be more directly applicable to road cars, and racing would be seen to be making a response to the environmentally conscious 1990s.
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Honda & VTEC
Honda's VTEC system was originally the brainchild of Kiyoshi Kawashima who developed Tadashi Kume's CVCC system which also inspired him to develop VVTLEC which was abbreviated to VTEC

VTEC technology was not originally designed with racing on the track in mind, although it was first used on track in formula nippon. VTEC was Kiyoshi's solution to a long standing problem; Traditionally you had to cam the engine (choose the grind/size of the lobes on the camshaft) for making power low down (small ammount of lift short duration) or you could have High lift camshafts that barrely made any power untill high up in the rev range where the high lift and duration of the camshaft was utilised by the higher dynamic compression making all of its power high up.
Ever wondered why the old domestic V8 cars didnt rev very high at all!!?!!

So Kiyoshi designed this system so the performance could be had low down and high up the rev range. There are now as you know many variations of the VTEC system, some for economy, some performance, some both.
When this innovation was masterminded people said it would never take off, as with numerous Honda developments; it was technology that was over 10 years ahead of its time. now all the other manufacturers are copying it. And if you remember the 1987 CRX VTEC, the JDM vehicle was the first NA engine that produced more than 100hp/Litre. So VTEC was not originally made for racing although the system is very reliably designed.



B-Series etc...

The 1987 CRX VTEC was the first PRODUCTION car to use VTEC system.
And although the design work started in the early eighties, the NSX was release in 1991, 4years after the CRX VTEC. VTEC as its says was developed to solve a problem; Cam'ing an engine for both high AND low revs.
And remember that B16a was first USED in 1987 on production cars, and kept going strong with only slight changes through onto 1999/2000. A very good run for a superb B-series of engines.


Prelude

In the book talking about the Prelude it says
"This was the vehicle that was used to introduce a pioneering technology that astonished the motoring world in 1986- four wheel steering.
The best tribute to four wheel steering was that it was possible to drive a Prelude quite a long way without noticing it #, but a driver would be insensitive not to observe the responsiveness and absence of body-roll when swerving or cornering. Many doubted the value of steering the extra set of wheels-but Honda's approach, with a mechanical system that displayed inginuity rather than electro-hydraulic complication was reassuringly simple.
Soon every major Japanese manufacturer had 4ws (including Nissan Skyline) either in production or under development, and others such as Porche incorperated rear suspension arrangements that included a measure of rear wheel steer (Passive systems were used by a few manufacturers).
Honda managed what engineers from the dawn of motoring, including the British racing driver Freddie Dixon in the 1930's, had been trying for, namely to control and drive each wheel independantly.
The Japanese Prelude of 1991 (4G) had a new Orietal grace and further enhanced its growing reputation for good handling. It tookcues from the NSX by demonstrating that satisfactory behaviour on the road was nota question of tyre-wrenching grip and traction, so uch as precision and sensitivity. It also replaced the pioeering mechanical 4ws with the sophistocated electronic system.
Designed in Honda's Californian styling studio, and aimed at America with Europe i mind, it was a tougher more robust looking car than its predecessor and competed with more obviously sporting competitors from Toyota and Nissan.
Althought the vehicle was first released in Japan with much higher spec creature comforts and slightly more powerful engines.





Thats all your getting, it took me an age to write all about that andmake sure my references and quotes were accurate for you guys. Hope you enjoyed learnign about this great company that started off as Soichiro Honda's' "Honda technical reaserch Institute" which when lauched started off as nothing more that a little wooden workshop and through excellance became the great manufacturer we see before us today.
 
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Hail Honda!!!!!

I'll be supporting them for a long time...:D
 
Some very interesting info man!!!

Could you say where you got it from?A book?

Never realised they were the first to use 4ws!Amazing!!!

All hail the BIG H!!:bow:
 
I love this thread....very much appreciated research. :p
 
The 1989 DA6 Integra RSi/XSi was actually the first Honda to feature the B16A DOHC VTEC engine. This was followed quickly by the EF8 CRX SiR in September. The following year saw the introduction of this engine on the EF9 Civic SiR. The NSX also made its debut that year.
 
Great write-up!! :clap: vry interesting facts...

hope Honda F1 start picking up their form, to see them were they belong! :D
 
Nice one Will, which book is that from? :) I'm going to steal it!
 
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