Honda’s First Race Car in the US Debuted the Toughest Way Possible: Baja
Honda’s beginnings in US production car racing came from the most grueling test of driver and machine: the Baja 1000.
Honda can trace its four-wheel motorsport roots back to Formula 1 in the ’60s. Tiny V12 motors powered those cars, but in the US, things were vastly different. Honda’s racing in the US domestic market started off-road.
Road & Track uncovered the story of this N600. It’s an unrestored Baja racer, and as you can expect, a little Honda from the late ’60s got its fair share of abuse in that race. But Honda wasn’t the main reason behind this entry. Bill Robertson Jr. and Dave Ekins were two experienced Honda dirtbike racers who had success in the Baja 1000 with CL72 Scramblers. With cars starting to compete in the same race, they wanted to run Honda’s new car, the N600. It would have its debut in the 1970 edition of the race, officially being Honda’s first US race car.
With a displacement of just 598cc, the N600 racer wasn’t going to be “fast” by the definition of the word. At best, it would put out 50 or so horsepower based on mild upgrades from the factory two-cylinder. But it would be fuel-efficient and carry with it Honda’s legendary reliability. In theory, this should have made the little Honda a success, but in preparing it for off-road racing, the law of unintended consequences struck. Raising the suspension causes issues with the CV axles. Specifically, they’d pop out of a full-unloaded suspension. That was the consequence of raising the suspension just four inches.
Honda’s first Baja race lasted just 68 miles out of the full 1000 miles.
The very imperfect N600 now resides in the caring hands of Tim Mings, a curator of old, early Hondas. The patina of off-road battle – and decades of neglect – mean this car is still rough. But it does run. There’s no evidence that Mings will restore this one, but we like the fact that that it is being preserved. It would lose a bit of mystique if it had clean, un-wrinkled fenders.
As we all know, Honda motorsport evolved from that first outing, and the success since then have more than made up for that first Baja race. But their next successes would come on paved surfaces. Take a look at any given track day and the Honda N600’s family tree is still very much evident.
Photos: Road & Track
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