Picture a small 1960s roadster with a tidy hood, round headlights, a low windshield, and the kind of friendly shape that makes an MG Midget or Triumph Spitfire look aggressive. It looks like it belongs outside a pub on a Sunday morning, wearing skinny tires and a grin.Yes, that’s a Honda. The company had spent years making motorcycles that loved revs, lightness, and clever packaging, but when it finally put four wheels under a two-seat open car, it carried those habits with it. The result looked like a cute roadster from ten feet away, but under the skin it thought like a motorcycle that had just discovered doors. Before Honda Could Build Cars, It Had To Prove It Belonged Hagerty/YouTube Before Honda could ask buyers to take its cars seriously, it had to get past a basic problem. People did not know Honda as a car company. By the early 1960s, the firm had built its name on motorcycles, not sedans, trucks, or sports cars. That gave the brand speed, engineering pride, and racing nerve, but it did not automatically give it trust among car buyers.The stakes were bigger than one cute little roadster. Japan’s car industry was changing fast, and Honda needed to show that it belonged before the market hardened around older, established automakers. Soichiro Honda wanted a sports car because he believed it could create new demand, not just go after the same buyers as everyone else. Takeo Fujisawa, the business brain beside him, pushed for a mini truck because commercial vehicles made sense and Honda’s motorcycle dealers needed something to sell when bike sales cooled off.The manufacturer entered the car market in August 1963 with the T360 mini truck. Two months later, it followed with a two-seat open-top sports car. First, the truck proved Honda could sell a useful four-wheeled machine, and then the sports car proved Honda could make one with a pulse. It also showed that Honda had no plans to become boring just because it had added two extra wheels. The Clues Were In The Way It Revved, Drove, And Put Power Down Hagerty/YouTube Even before naming it, the clues make the car sound less like a normal 1960s roadster and more like a motorcycle engineer’s weekend project. Its engine displaced just over half a liter, which sounds like something that should power a lawn tool with ambition. Yet it used a twin-cam four-cylinder layout, four carburetors, and a rev range that would make many larger cars of the day wheeze into early retirement. Small engine, huge enthusiasm. Very Honda.The car also stayed light and rear-wheel drive, the two ingredients that make small sports cars feel alive without needing silly power. It needed good response, and that was the trick – a tiny engine can feel weak when it has to drag too much weight, but in a compact open car, high revs become a personality trait. It is the difference between jogging and a terrier hearing the treat bag open.Then came the strangest clue. The way power reached the rear wheels. Most small sports cars used a more familiar rear axle setup. Honda did something that felt much closer to a motorcycle shop. The differential sent power through chains, with one chain running to each rear wheel. In a car, that sounds like the mechanic lost a bet. In a Honda, it starts to make sense. The Honda S500 Was A Motorcycle-Souled Sports Car Toyota Automobile MuseumThat strange little roadster was the Honda S500. It arrived in 1963 and became Honda’s first passenger car, directly followed by the S600. The T360 truck got there first as Honda’s first production automobile, but the S500 gave Honda its first proper passenger-car statement. It was not large, loud, or muscular, and it did not need to be. It announced Honda’s arrival by revving like it had somewhere better to be.The S500 used a 531 cc double-overhead-cam inline-four with four carburetors. The tiny four-cylinder made 44 horsepower at 8,000 rpm, with a top speed of about 81 mph. That number looks modest now, but 44 horsepower from 531 cc works out to more than 82 horsepower per liter. In the early 1960s, from a little carbureted road car, that was spicy.Hagerty/YouTube Contemporary spec summaries note that the S500 could spin past 9,500 rpm, which was wild for a road car of its era. Many bigger engines made their best noises far earlier and then politely gave up. The Honda wanted to be worked and rewarded the driver who kept the little four-cylinder singing near the top of the tach. In other words, it drove like a motorcycle in a small suit.The rear end completed the bit, except it was not a bit. The S500 used a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout, but its rear wheels were chain-driven from the differential. A chain ran to each rear wheel, and that helped create an independent rear suspension setup with trailing arms and coil springs. It was odd, clever, compact, and very much Honda. The S500 Was More Than A Weird Engineering Party Trick Toyota Automobile Museum The chain drive can sound like a novelty today, the kind of thing that gets brought up at cars and coffee right before someone says, “Actually,...” and everyone else suddenly remembers an appointment. But Honda’s setup had real purpose. It was a packaging solution that created space between the rear tires. That space held the spare tire, and that was important because a spare was mandatory at the time.That same Honda design discussion points to another benefit: mass centralization. By gathering heavier parts closer to the car’s center of gravity, the layout helped the car’s dynamic feel. In simple terms, the S500 put weight where it could do less harm.Toyota Automobile Museum The S500 also came from a time when Honda had to squeeze car production out of a company still built around motorcycles. Different parts of early automobile production were spread across existing facilities, with engines, bodies, transmissions, differentials, and final assembly handled through different factories. That background makes the S500 feel even more impressive.The manufacturer even turned the launch into a public event. Before the car reached buyers, the company ran a newspaper price-guessing contest for its new sports car. Honda says it drew more than 5.7 million entries, and the announced price was 459,000 yen, which Honda described as lower than comparable models. That is a delightfully Honda move; build a tiny twin-cam chain-drive roadster, then make the whole country guess the sticker price. Honda’s First Hint That Cars Could Think Like Bikes Toyota Automobile Museum The S500 matters because it caught Honda at a rare moment. The company was stepping into cars, but it had not yet learned to hide its motorcycle instincts under layers of convention. It built a roadster because a sports car could prove a point. It used a tiny high-revving engine because that was what Honda knew how to make exciting. It used chains at the rear because packaging mattered and because Honda engineers were not allergic to strange answers.That spirit did not stop with the S500. The S600 followed, then the S800, and decades later the S2000 carried the same basic romance. Compact size, rear-wheel drive, a two-seat open body, and an engine that made the driver chase the redline like it owed money. Honda designers have since described the early “S” cars as deeply important to the brand’s sports-car history, with lightweight feel, front-engine rear-drive balance, and convertible openness forming part of that identity.The S500 does not deserve attention only because it was first. First cars can be awkward, after all. They can feel like rough drafts. But the S500 feels more like a statement written in tiny, neat handwriting at 9,500 rpm. It showed that Honda could build cars without forgetting why people loved its motorcycles.Source: Honda