Honda’s ground-breaking coupes | Drive Flashback

Story originally published in Drive on 22 August, 1998

Collectible Japanese cars of the late 1960s and ’70s are, let’s be honest, pretty thin on the ground. There’s the Toyota 2000GT, if you can find one and don’t mind another mortgage.

Then there’s the Datsun 240Z and, to a slightly lesser extent, the 260Z, which represent an affordable way to own something with some intrinsic interest. But other than these, it’s slim pickings.

But one car that seems unfairly ignored (possibly because many haven’t even heard of it) is the Honda 9S Coupe.

Great performance for the time, interesting styling, and that old Honda cachet all make a 9S Coupe (or its less-powerful 7S Coupe sibling) worth consideration.

So what was a 7S or 9S exactly?

Both variants share the same two-door, hardtop bodyshell, and it’s not an unattractive one at that.

The overall stance suggests performance, and it’s only the typically Japanese 1960s touches that jar a little. The beak-nosed look is a little odd and some of the details such as chrome-look, plastic inserts are a bit tacky. Overall, though, the 7 and 9 present far more purity of design than just about anything else that came out of Japan at the time.

Of course, the styling was not what made the 7 and 9 special; it was Honda’s determination to go its own way that set the cars apart from the pack. The company’s commitment to a performance goal made the coupes the little road-burners they were.

The suspension, which saw MacPherson struts at the front, was unusually conventional for Honda. Years later, it would ditch the MacPherson design and move exclusively to its own double-wishbone design. In 1970, however, these simple (but effective) struts were used.

More interesting was the decision to use MacPherson struts at the rear as well, giving the 7 and 9 proper four-wheel independent suspension.

Brakes were discs at the front (Holden and Ford were still using four-wheel-drum brakes) and drums at the rear. Steering was rack-and-pinion.

It was under the bonnet that the little Hondas really shone. At a time when Honda was still messing about with two-strokes, the 7 and 9 sported four-cylinder, four-stroke engines measuring 1.3 litres.

A single overhead camshaft was used (push-rods were still all the rage) but the real eye-opener was Honda’s decision to air-cool the engine.

Dubbed "Duo Dyna" by Honda, a fan pumped cooling air through a series of ducts cast into the engine and removed the need for a big, heavy, water-cooling system with a radiator.

The 7S was the more mainstream model and sported a single carburettor for claimed figures of 75kW at 7200rpm and 107Nm of torque at 4500rpm.

Consider those figures for a moment in the context of 1970. Seventy-five kiloWatts is about 100 horsepower in the old measure; a good result from a 2.5-litre engine back then and positively outrageous from a 1.3-litre motor. And that 7500rpm redline was almost unimaginable; even today it indicates the engine means business.

But the 9S took it even further. Drawing on Honda’s heritage in motorcycles, the 9 was fitted with four carburettors – one for each cylinder. This might sound like technology for its own sake, but this arrangement is still the norm in multi-cylinder motorcycles, where a dedicated carburettor for each cylinder allows the engineers to tune the engine for maximum power.

Using short, straight intake runners meant the 9’s engine breathed even more deeply than the 7’s, and power jumped to a claimed 87kW at 7300rpm and torque to 119Nm at 5000rpm.

This was proper science-fiction stuff, but it didn't end there. Honda once again flew in the face of convention by mounting the engines transversely and sending drive to the front wheels in a move that anticipated a major worldwide trend by about 15 years.

The gearbox was a four-speed manual and, not too surprisingly, there was no automatic version offered. In outright performance terms, the 7S was quick for its class and capacity, but that was about it.

Honda’s own figures (which are pretty believable in this case) quote a 0-100kmh time of 14.5 seconds and a standing 400 metres in 19.5 seconds. Most small cars can better that now, of course, but in 1970, there wasn’t a whole lot that would stay with the 7S.

Then there was the 9S. With its extra 12kW and 12Nm, it really blitzed the small-car field back then, and only similarly exotic machinery like Alfa Romeo GTVs had any hope of keeping a 9 in sight.

The 9 could gallop from standstill to 100kmh in 11.5 seconds and cream the first 400 metres in 17.7 seconds. Its top speed was a full 20kmh up on the 7, with a factory claim of 180kmh.

Brand new, they were expensive little cars. The 7S retailed for $3180 and the 9S for $3480 at a time when a Holden Kingswood was $2897.

Finding a coupe now will require plenty of research and homework, and when you do, buy on condition alone. That makes giving a price difficult, with roughies (if there are still any around) as little as $2500 or $3000 and really tidy ones considerably more than that.

What eventually killed the 7 and 9 coupes (in 1973) was, believe it or not, the Honda Civic.

There’s no doubt the Civic was the right car at the right time, but its conventional water cooling, single carburettor and more pedestrian tuning meant it was never the inspirational thing that a 9S Coupe was.

This early foray into exotica tipped us off that Honda was a company to watch. And while they might be poles apart in performance and relative pricing, Honda’s NS-X Supercar owes at least some of its existence to ground-breakers like the 7 and 9.