{"id":53717,"date":"2019-03-20T10:08:27","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T10:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.influx.co.uk\/?p=53717"},"modified":"2022-06-14T12:18:23","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T11:18:23","slug":"honda-z600","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/cars\/honda-z600\/","title":{"rendered":"Honda Z600"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first car cost 5p.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a 1974 Honda Z600 coupe, which should have been a vibrant orange – the only colour offered – but had been re-sprayed a horrid matt yellow.<\/p>\n

My dad lived on a River Thames houseboat and the Z, which belonged to a neighbour, had been flooded up to its door handles in river water. My pa bought it, dried it out, using a hairdryer and old newspapers on the vinyl seats.<\/p>\n

He subsequently battled with galloping rust. When I took it over, aged 19 (hence the 5p \u2018charge\u2019), I became familiar with plastic filler and rust inhibitor, and my dad drew a cartoon of the car looking the worse for wear.<\/p>\n

The Z600 had a free-revving, all alloy, air-cooled twin 599cc engine, mated to a four-speed, synchromesh-free transmission. Smaller than an old school Mini, its TV screen-shaped back window acted as a tailgate, it had a rev counter; tombstone seats and a swivelling map light in the roof console. I was 19 and loved blatting about in this tiny car, which was far faster than it ought to have been.<\/p>\n

I was also very poor and stuck with a battery that was sick, so the Z wouldn\u2019t always fire up. I once persuaded a motorcycle policeman to help me push start it, and remember his big red face, under his crash hat, framed by the back window.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n

I collected a Ford Transit as a bonnet ornament. All the Z\u2019s front panels bolted on, so I retrieved secondhand bonnet, bumper and wings from a dead Z rotting in a farmyard and attached them. The car now looked like a yellow dwarf with an orange party nose.<\/p>\n

Oddly, the police kept stopping me. \u201cAre you carrying drugs sir?\u201d asked one rozzer.<\/p>\n

When the engine began making terminal knocking noises I spent \u00a350 on another Z600 that had been rear-ended and swapped motors. The car was front driven and the engine and gearbox sat on a subframe. Once the ancillaries were detached, some friends and I lifted up each car like a pair of big wheelbarrows and dropped my Z over the top of the battered one\u2019s running gear. Eventually a mystery charging fault and advancing tin worm killed my little Honda, and I sold it to a man with a Berkeley sportscar who wanted to use the engine.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t the last Z I owned. In the mid-1990s I foolishly bought a rotted out example, then found another with a busted drive shaft that had sat in a garage for a decade. It cost about \u00a3300 and a collection of 1960s \u2018cars of today\u2019 cigarette cards.<\/p>\n

Bits from the rotten car and some serious welding brought the moribund Z back to life, and once MOT’d my dad and I drove it on a 500 -odd mile trip around France for a story in Top Gear magazine about French microcars.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d still have that car now, but it was stored in a barn that was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. All that remained of my little Honda was a twisted lump of molten metal.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first car cost 5p. It was a 1974 Honda Z600 coupe, which should have been a vibrant orange – the only colour offered – but had been re-sprayed a horrid matt yellow. My dad lived on a River Thames houseboat and the Z, which belonged to a neighbour, had been flooded up to its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":53721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1779],"tags":[2571,131,251,2077,1177],"class_list":["post-53717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cars","tag-first-car","tag-honda","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-japanese-cars","manufacturers-honda-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHonda Z600 - Influx<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My first car cost 5p. 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