Having featured a non-European car as last week’s Prime Find, I thought we’d stay away from European marques for this week, too, and I think the most obvious country to look at when focusing elsewhere apart from the USA and Europe is of course Japan.
The ViaRETRO team – and our readership – is split on the appeal of classics from the land of the rising sun, and I have to say that while there are a few Japanese classics that I wouldn’t mind owning, they would be behind a lengthy queue of European cars that would have first call on my bank account if by some happy chance it contained sufficient funds. Nevertheless, we aim to please as broad a range of tastes as possible here, and I can think of at least two members of our team who would love to have this week’s Prime Find in their garages.
The first candidate I spotted was a late first-generation Toyota Celica ST 1600 Coupé, a car I happen to like very much – both it and its mini-Mustang-like Liftback sibling look cooler than any subsequent generation Celica to my eyes. However, I thought it would have been a slightly obvious choice – I wanted something that bit more different. I didn’t have much further to look, as I found it at the same dealer in The Netherlands.
This week’s Prime Find is another small Japanese coupé, but one I was almost completely unaware of, for reasons which would become apparent. It’s a blue 1972 Honda 1300 Coupé, listed as a Dynamic Series GL, though it’s generally more prosaically known as a 1300 Coupé 7.
Like many a coupé, this was based on a more staid three-box saloon, in this case, the Honda 1300, which on its introduction at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1968 was the largest car Honda had made, the company up to that point having concentrated on kei cars such as the N360 and N600.
It was front wheel drive and came in two versions – the Series 77 and Series 99 – with two typically high-revving versions of the air-cooled 1298 cc engine, one putting out c.100bhp for the 77 series, and a four-carburettor version pumping out a claimed 115bhp for the 99 – these were impressive outputs for the time, making top speeds of up to 115mph possible for the 9-series cars. It’s not a coincidence that these engines were further developed by Honda’s competition department, though with fairly modest success.
There were some interesting technical aspects, including an unusual way of heating the passenger compartment, utilising hot air from the engine and exhaust manifold. I have no idea how effective or otherwise this was, but it wasn’t a method used much subsequently. There were also two complete sets of wiring, one for each side of the car, so if one failed for whatever reason, you still had lights.
The 1300 saloon was intended to compete with the likes of the Toyota Corona and Datsun Bluebird, but Honda also wanted a sportier variant, which resulted in the Coupé, launched in 1970 with a purposeful re-styled nose and fastback, but which was otherwise mechanically very similar, including sharing the engines, with the less powerful model known as the Coupé 7, the 115bhp version as the Coupé 9.
The 1300 Saloon and Coupé were not widely sold outside Japan other than in Australia, which would go some way to explaining my ignorance of them – indeed, I don’t ever recall seeing either a 1300 saloon or coupé, and I’m not sure I would have recognised one anyway. About 38,000 examples of the coupés were built, with 1,053 exported, 70% of these to Australia.
The 1300 was only produced for a few years, being replaced in 1973 by the 145, which itself lasted only a year before the Civic – already in Honda’s model line-up since 1972 – usurped it to become the company’s mainstay in the small/medium sector.
“Our” 1972 1300 Coupé 7 S looks very smart in its blue bodywork and dark grey with black with blue chevron sports seats. BAsed on brochure photos I’m guessing these are not the original seats, but there is very little information about the history of the actual car on the website – no mileage, number of owners, etc, though presumably this would be available directly from the dealer. The car does look good in the photos and video on the dealer’s website, but it’s hard to know if the asking price of €20,000 or £17,250 is reasonable or not as there are few to compare this one with – in fact this is the only one on the carandclassic website. RM Sotheby’s auctioned a Coupé 9 in August 2018 in South Africa with an estimate of £5,200 to £5,800 but this was a restoration project. Certainly it will reflect its rarity in Europe, and being Japanese it is of course RHD, so perfectly usable in the UK – as such, it would make a very unusual acquisition and I doubt the new owner would see another at a show.
As always with our Prime Finds, caveat emptor applies; if you’re interested, more photos and dealer info can be found here – http://www.kucarfa.nl/Honda/H1300CoupeGB.html
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us inspire by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk