Honda’s 1984 HP-X idea was the carbon fiber future we anticipated

Check out this HP-X idea from 1984 that has been restored, seemingly so Honda can present the world how cool futuristic vehicles used to look.

As a automotive born within the Knight Rider period, the HP-X positioned superior tech throughout the driver’s attain, together with a CD participant, GPS, real-time telemetry, and “particular sonar” expertise that warns you about street situations. On the time, Honda known as this tech suite its “digital driver assist system.”

The HP-X was designed to run on a Honda F2 racing-based engine: a 2.0-liter DOHC 24-valve V6. And since there are not any doorways, the clear Perspex cover comes off, so you may bounce in like a fighter jet pilot. The cover additionally helps with seems to be, aerodynamics, and features as an air brake. The design probably impressed future two-seater automobiles such because the Honda and Acura NSX.

To make it light-weight, the mid-engine wedge-shaped marvel was constructed with uncommon-at-the-time automotive supplies like carbon fiber, Kevlar, and honeycomb paneling. In line with Honda, “the first-generation NSX embodied lots of the concepts and improvements first explored within the HP-X” when it debuted a few years later.

On Wednesday, Honda additionally highlighted a 2024 Purple Dot Design Award for its equally clean Saloon idea EV. A part of the Honda Zero collection introduced earlier this yr as an antidote to the pattern of “thick” EVs, seeing it subsequent to the HP-X reveals how a lot the thought of a “skinny” and “mild” automobile has modified within the final 40 years.

The HP-X initially debuted on the 1984 Turin Auto Present, and after being restored by Italian design agency Pininfarina, it’s now coming into the Pebble Seashore Concours d’Magnificence (or competitors of magnificence). Contemplating the present is in California, it will have been good in the event that they plopped a couple of battery packs in and made it into the good EV but.