This Honda S800 is a beautiful lightweight speed machine

At the recent Classic Car Sunday Breakfast Club, we met up with Tony Ashcroft, the owner of the little Japanese drop-top classic you see pictured here. The S800’s story is, as Tony explains, an interesting one.

“Honda went from making motorbikes to making cars in the mid-sixties,” Tony explains. “And the first one they did was a 600cc engine which wasn’t considered powerful or torquey enough, so they increased it massively to 800cc.”

Originally a coupé, Tony explains how his S800 became something a little more special. “They did it as a convertible and a coupé, and this actually started life as a coupé. The chap who had it before me – I’ve had it ten years – decided to turn it into a semi-race replica, evocative of the ‘60s and ‘70s race Hondas, and he took it under a railway arch in London and chopped the roof off. Obviously I’ve then inherited it with a fair bit of trimming work to do, so it’s a sort of a one-off special speedster with a Perspex screen made by a yacht builder for me.”

Buying a car that’s had its roof ripped away by the previous owner sounds like it might not have been left in perfect condition, then?

“It had a manky old screen,” Tony adds. “That was a bit of an experiment and was screwed in with just a random selection of screws – there’s quite a lot of effort gone into making it look pretty there. It had a leaky petrol tank so I had a new stainless steel one made up in Portugal by an enthusiast from the club. The engine had been rebuilt actually very, very well by the former, now passed away, president of the Honda Owners Club Peter Rose. And I had to have the back axle and the gearbox rebuilt. It’s got some very special balanced stainless steel exhausts on it, it’s got very lightweight magnesium wheels, all of the heater, the side windows, the bumpers, the windscreen wipers – everything I don’t need – is in the garage, it’s got coil over suspension which is fully adjustable as well.”

How much does it weigh? In Tony’s own words: “Nothing – everything apart from me that’s heavy has been stripped out!” Tony then pulls the hand-brake off and pushes the car backwards and forwards with one hand. “I’ve never had it weighed, but if I had to guess I’d say 650kg, something like that. It’s really very light.”

Our attention turns to the S800’s paint scheme and, as Tony, explains, it’s routed in the car’s history. “It was red originally. A lot of these are new panels but it’s old metal at the end of the day, and I went round with a chinagraph pencil and marked up everything that needed repair, and there were so many areas that needed repairs that I decided to go for a full respray. And if you’re going to do that I then thought about a colour change, so I looked in the internet and found that in 1967, the same year as the car, a car no. 58 which was a coupe in this exact livery won its class in the Nürburgring 500km road race. And everyone was astonished because it was up against massive things and it was this little Honda! Because this is a 1967 car, and because I was born in 1958, it seemed entirely appropriate to change the livery to this.”

While Tony isn’t too keen on giving us a look at the engine (“I’m not going to lift up the bonnet because that’s the embarrassing part”), he’s confident that it’s a true masterpiece. “When it came out of the box I think they were about 80 horsepower. With the pipes and a special filter on it now, probably about 90-95 horsepower.

“The engine is an absolute jewel because it comes from Honda’s experience with motorbike engines, so it is just a pure piece of art. It’s just incredible. And the noise it makes!”

Finally, we ask what Tony likes most about his piece of Honda history. “Just the purity, really. You’ve got three pedals, a steering wheel and a gear lever. You’ve got no assistance of any sort whatsoever, and you don’t need it. And the beautiful thing about it, when you’re doing 60mph on a 60mph road you feel like you’re flying – you don’t actually have to break the speed limit to have fun.

“It’s the closest thing to having a go-kart on the road – a fully road-legal, insured go-kart, and who wouldn’t want one of them?”

Photography by Pete Summers.