Honda Hondina Zagato

The Honda Hondina sports car was created in 1970 by the Italian studio Zagato, commissioned by the Japanese engineering corporation Honda. Zagato’s Honda Hondina was one of the first sporty kei cars ever built.

It was based on the chassis of the Japanese subcompact car Honda N360 with a standard 360 cc two-cylinder two-stroke engine with a power of 36 hp. Top speed is 120 kph. The original open-top body was created by the Italians. It had an integrated roll bar and no doors.

Still in its infancy, Honda wasn’t interested in taking the Hondina past the concept stage but it perhaps remembered the concept when it designed a topless, mid-engined kei car christened Beat in the late 1980s.

The Hondina used the mechanicals of the Honda N360, which appeared in March 1967 with a 354 cc air-cooled two-cylinder engine; a 36 PS version arrived in October 1968. Zagato is a Milan coachbuilder founded in 1919 by Ugo Zagato, a former aeronautical engineer who brought lightweight aircraft-style construction to car bodies.