Vintage Thing No.38 - Honda S-MX

I'd never seen one of these before. I saw it on the industrial estate at Doublebois just up from Adrian Booth's workshop and didn't know what it was, so just had to find out. And after a deal of scrabbling about, I managed to identify it as a Honda S-MX. If you wanted a cube on wheels with an automatic box and fold down futon-style beds inside then this is the car for you. It's a good example of the kind of speciality cars the Japanese do so well. Any other car producing nation would never even try something like this. "Oh no they would say, there'd never be any call for something like that." So despite the slush box, I start to like it because of the odd niche that it's aimed at. There's a kind of "can-do" approach that the designers have followed and I like that.

I was dropping an A series cylinder head off at Adrian's to be reconditioned and he said there was a whole set of camping gear available as standard from the factory with this wagon. To start off with, neither of us reckoned much to it but I was looking at it from the wrong side - the kerb side. The otehr side has a single door and looks much better. I have to admit that it grew on me the more I looked around it, despite the slushbox.

I've never had a good experience with autos. They change gear all by themselves! Most disconcerting. Driving one, reminds me of riding a horse - I only tried it once - because autos feel like they have a mind of there own and - just like a horse - it's not a very big mind.

With a slushbox and the aerodynamics of a small bungalow, fuel consumption is reputedly 25mpg.

But if I stood in the road and admired the offside, it looked so much sleeker simply because it didn't have the vertical lines that extra sets of doors inflict on a car. It's a sliding door, too, on the passenger side only. That's fine in Japan, the Antipodes and the UK (and Anarchadia too incidentally) but no good on the Continent or in the US.

Which side do you prefer? With the tinted windows it looks like a smart little black van from the offside. And this side has much more impact than the nearside and I am perplexed but pleasantly surprised at what a difference the absence of the side doors makes. In fact, to quote David Brown our design lecturer on my Industrial Design/Transport course at Coventry Polytechnic, "I find myself liking it."

Somebody somewhere liked this S-MX sufficiently to personally import it from Japan. It's based on the Honda CR-V and was built from 1996-2006. The engine is a 1973cc (88 x 89) dohc four VTEC B20B unit that pumps out 140bhp and the 4 speed slushbox is stirred with an American style column lever that's like an over grown indicator stalk. There's also air-conditioning and ABS braking. Some even came with a 4x4 option.

The trouble with these MPVs like the S-MX, though, is that their interiors are too smart. They are not really workhorses like I need and not sports cars that I like. They are posh little minibuses and some - like this one - are too posh for even toting dogs and sticky-fingered kids. My old van (a future Vintage Thing methinks) doesn't look as smart as this bit is ssssso much more versatile, even without the designer camping gear (although I admit that this sounds rather fun).

This S-MX had bright yellow seats. My old van just has some off cuts of carpet and when they get oily - and they will - I simply throw them away and get some more. Honda had a reputation for the greyest of grey interiors when the S-MX was introduced and I reckon they were trying to compensate. The inside is the most striking aspect of the S-MX but wouldn't last if I used it as a van for picking up the spare parts I habitually cart around.

I reckon black is the best colour for the S-MX. You can get body kits for them but these are very much a question of personal taste. The S-MX reminds me of a Tonka toy and the more I think about it the more child-like the styling becomes - a car made out of building blocks. Look at it from its best side, though, and it looks like it was drawn by a child who had a highly developed aesthetic sense. Later versions had more circular headlamps that I think improved the looks slightly.

If only the SM-X had a manual box. Then I might be more kindly disposed towards it. The S-MX seems to have been designed as a town car, hence the slushbox, but why make the seats fold down into a bed? Are the traffic jams really that bad in Japan?

I have some Japanese Car Styling magazines for although semi-retired from active participation in industrial design I still take an interest. In one of the old issues is a piece on the S-MX, which was introduced by Honda as a series of new "Creative Movers". Don't you just love the language these firms come up with?

Apparently the S-MX is intended as a car for singles or couples. It was deliberately styled to look "bad", that's "bad" as in Michael Jackson bad. So are we expecting this black S-MX to turn pale and all it's plastic bits drop off? No. Honda build quality is too good for that.

The longer wheelbase F-MX (still based on the CR-V underpinnings shared with the S-MX) is for families with young children. So the S-MX is a kind of starter car and when you get married and settle down with kids you trade up to an F-MX. Yuck!

The S in S-MX stands for Street and the M for Move - Street Move Cross. That's probably a clue as to its intended habitat. But the Honda CR-V - another lifestyle 4x4 like an early Freelander - had a manual box and a similar engine with 7 extra brakes. I dunno how you'd keep the column gear shift. I've nothing against that - just the slushbox on the end of it. Raid the corporate parts bin and you'd have a little van I could be tempted by.

Especially in black.

On what does makes a Vintage Thing

A Vintage Thing? Or not a Vintage Thing? That is the question.

The best Vintage Things are obvious. They are high performance cars and motorbikes that are either rare or look great, an engineer or designer's dream come true. It's a very simple definition but occasionally I like something just because it's odd.

And I'm often surprised by what I stumble across and get enthusiastic about. And some of the Vintage Things have been dangerously close to the kinds of vehicles I have come to despise. See what doesn't make a Vintage Thing.what doesn't make a Vintage Thing.

During my teens, I went through a passing phase of drawing multi-purpose vehicles. I drew them everywhere and got into trouble at school for doing so. I didn't break windows or smoke, I just filled my rough book with drawings.

At the time, I felt particularly inspired by buses and coach designs from the 1950s and early 60s. I was exploring a different kind of aesthetic. I don't think I really ever found it but I enjoyed chasing it around. I was also interested in ex-Army vehicles around this time and had my own 1:76 scale army of Airfix kits that consisted mostly of Jeeps and trucks and had hardly any tanks. Some of them were ham-fisted attempts to emulate the vehicles in Gerry Anderson's Super Marionation films like Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet (but often these episodes gave vent to my destructive streak and my models ended up being set on fire). A third influence was fairground vehicles, many of which were ex-military designs artfully rebuilt by showmen for a specific purpose and brightly painted versions of the trucks in my model collection.

I wasn't alone in this obscure interest. One of my mates still likes Scammell Showtrac showman's trucks. He once hatched a plan to make a scaled down version out of an ex-GPO Morris Minor van he had, which had a separate chassis and got as far as doing some preliminary drawings. He worked out all the proportions (the doors were a bit small but this was in the name of art as well as being amotoring joke that only afew of us would get) but was stumped for headlamps until I suggested some from a Citroen 2CV. I reckon it would have looked brilliant and would have done strange things to everyone's spatial relationships if it had ever got built.

My designs were often at least of the size of a Ford Transit and frequently featured four wheel drive, which in the late 70s was still a novelty. Some were specifically camper vans or more accurately living wagons for life on the open road had a definite romance. But they were nothing like today's SUVs and MPVs.

Unfortunately, there are no surviving drawings from this youthful burst of creativity but I recently had a go at recreating them.

This one is based on a Dennis Mace bus but has four wheel drive. I remember be fascinated by all those sliding windows. Were summers really that good? Or was this little bus just very noisy? The original, although preserved, had obviously had a hard life and all the doors didn't really fit properly any more. It reminds me of a railway coach - possibly a retired "camping" coach - that's been shortened given a radiator and put on wheels.

Wilts and Dorset bus company had a highly modified ex-Army AEC Matador 4x4 that they used as a recovery vehicle and this drawing is based on the splendid coachbuilt bodywork this device featured. I had several Matadors in my fleet but never made one as spectacular as this. The more modern grille makes it look a bit like a Merryweather fire engine, another favourite if just for the name. The area where the crane would have been was replaced by a folding tailgate and retractable roof similar to that designed by Brooks Steven for the 1963 Studebaker Wagonaire station wagon. I had a Husky model of one of these. Remember them?

But they didn't all have to be four-wheel-drives. Other MPVs that I designed were low and built for speed. Another of my favourites from those far off days was an AEC Regal IV of Berry's of Taunton. This was built in 1951 and had a design of Bellhouse coachwork known as the Landmaster. This drawing sticks very closely to the original coach design and shows what possibilities were offered by the innovation of an underfloor engine. I'd love to know who the individual was behind this design. My drawing also reminds me of the buses that showmen used to operate. They were almost as glamorous as the rides they serviced and had a living area and panelled in windows with a storage area inside. Without the perpendicular lines of the window frames, and the sometimes awkward angles of the glass surfaces, they looked so much sleeker.

I was once offered an early Ford Transit minibus for next to nothing. It needed welding but had a V4 engine. I was quite tempted initially but this was tempered by the discovery that it wouldn't fit through the door to my garage. My girlfriend thought having it would be a great idea because she'd had such fun in one with a gang of friends. I understood what she meant. When I was at school we'd get travelling theatre groups visiting us in Transit vans. Creative types could never be drawn in such a way to a Nissan Prairie or a Vauxhall Zafira. Remember the Griff Rhys Jones advert for the Zafira? "We've not left any space under the bonnet becasue it's all inside where you can use it" except that the engine bays so cramped they're sods to work on.

The Transit minibus eventually went to a family owned coach company who painted it up to look like one then founder of the firm had run and I think it found a better home with them.

Basic trucks or tractors don't appeal to me so much. I can appreciate their engineering but they are more often pieces of industrial equipment, tools without any sense of specialness about them. I suppose they could be Vintage Things simply because of the loyal service they give but there needs to be something else about them -- a sense of fun or occasion, an intent for having a good time -- for them to be a "proper job" Vintage Thing. Some people can create a special out of the most unlikely material, though, and then that person's vision, when realised in metal, can make a great Vintage Thing.

At some point, I lost interest in the lifestyle four-wheel drives. The first Range Rovers certainly appeal to me but once they grew five doors instead of the original three I didn't like them so much. It's all those vertical shut lines for the doors and the smaller windows. Too many doors and vertical lines and you've got something that looks like it's standing still while doing 100mph. The first ones looked so much more sporty, much more sporty than today's Range Rover Sports look.

These just look ridiculous to me but an early Range Rover has a purity of purpose, an air of breaking new ground in many different senses and the pleasant feeling of surprise that the Not-Terribly-Good-Club-of-Great Britain actually came up with a world beater. This world beater has since been copied, made more complicated, bigger, heavier, faster but less efficient and less fun. They've been turned into put downs to less-affluent people and, to my perhaps rather jaundiced view, SUVs represent the worst sort of enthusiasm - the one that's at the expense of others. SUV drivers don't want to share anything with you.

And MPVs are too pretty inside. Stick an 8 by 4 sheet of galvanised sheet inside one and you'd ruin the interior. A Transit is versatile because it's purpose is less clearly defined. It's more of an MPV than an MPV, which is often full of seats and plastic storage "solutions" that take up the room that an 8 x 4 sheet needs. And many of them don't have that aesthetic quality that I was searching for, the "Wow!" that makes you take a second look. I am convinced that some of them have been deliberately "destyled" to make them look more "worthy" but of what I haven't a clue.

Having said that, one 4x4 MPV that does appeal to me is the Renault Scenic RX4. For many years, there was nothing like the Renault Megane Scenic in terms of a mid-sized MPV. That, in itself, does not qualify to be a Vintage Thing but what transformed this vehicle's standing in my eyes was the transformation into the RX4, a four-wheel-drive version with slightly increased ground clearance and, typically, a metallic interpretation of olive drab paint. The four-wheel-drive system meant that the spare wheel had to live outside on the back door and there were plastic wing defenders that gave it a chunkier look. The lack of a low ratio box hampered the RX4's off-road performance and the extra weight meant that it wasn't particularly fast or handled any better but for me the aesthetic changes really worked.

My mate Andrew - the one with all the tractors - summed things up pretty well for me the other day. We were driving along in his Land Rover with a tractor in tow on his trailer and the conversation turned to what sort of vehicle he might be persuaded to trade his TD5 in for. It wasn't long before it became obvious that only another Land Rover or possibly a Range Rover or Land Cruiser would fit the bill.

As we drove along the M5 and then the A30, I suggested various SUV alternatives but none of them interested old Andrew. I found his response particularly illuminating.

"None of them are no good much," was how he put it. "There's no low box."

In that short remark he summed up what I had been feeling for years. Without a low box in yer transmission you can't tow trailers effectively and yer off road performance is severely restricted.

It's not about lifestyle at all but action.

So, the nature of a Vintage Thing is just like a hot rod. There are many conventions and principles but the number one rule is that there is no rule.

It was on this trip down memory lane that I had something of a revelation. I wasn't designing MPVs at all. I was really designing race car transporters or service vehicles for motorcycle racing. I was making a statement about my own aspirations of the lifestyle I hope to lead, which is just what anyone who buys an MPV or SUV makes today, but one centred on Vintage Things.

Any vehicle is the result of its designer vision. They should all be dreams come true but sometimes they are living nightmares. The vision becomes impaired in some way.

To be a Vintage Thing, the creative dream behind it must be a good one. The designer’s intentions must have been clear, too.

It has to pass the “Wot’ll she do mister?” test. Vintage Things inspire enthusiasm and excitement among others - not envy.

And if you can see a Thunderbird puppet or Captain Scarlet driving it, then it's definitely a Vintage Thing.

On what doesn't make a Vintage Thing

Looking back at the machinery that has been featured on this blog as a Vintage Thing, I am rather surprised about the variety. When I started out on my enthusiastic ramblings, I thought high performance cars and motor bikes made by blokes in sheds would make up the vast majority of entries. I did not anticipate the numbers of four-wheel-drive trucks that have sneaked in under the radar. There have even been commercial vehicles - one with only three wheels and all the naff-ness that implies - and even some military vehicles.

What's been going on?

On reconsidering them all I can see that they remain worthy of the title Vintage Thing. For some reason, I like them.

The original intention was to feature Vintage Things that were distinctly esoteric and not featured widely elsewhere on the Internet. I didn't expect to see much in the way of mass-produced vehicles, or 4x4s or commercial vehicles because what interests me most of all are specials, those rare creations made by someone for a specific purpose or just for the hell of it. I like to feel close to the thought processes of the designer and this especially close to one-offs or vehicles made in limited production.

I also had a pretty clear idea of what wouldn't be featured on my Engine Punk blog as a Vintage Thing. Grey porridge family saloons do not interest me and if it’s mass-produced and featured elsewhere then why bother with it?

Naff-ness can be cool but there are limits. I'm an admirer of Laurie Bond and his work but his Mini-cars hold no attraction for me. Many microcars do have something I like, mind, typically the faster ones and some of the adverts are so laughable you can't help but be impressed by the sheer, desperate optimism they display, often in the face of all reasonable expectations.

Question - Are the children apparently running towards this Bond Mk G really running? Or are they being dragged?

No. When it comes to Bonds, the proper place for a Villers two-stroke engine is in a dirt bike.

Then there are those vehicles that “say something about you as a person.” It can’t be anything positive as far as I’m concerned. These are lifestyle machines. You are making a statement when you buy or drive them and usually that statement is that you’re a complete dick. Some can be driven without being a dick but often these vehicles turn confirmed non-dicks into irrelevant genitalia.

And is making that statement the only reason for these vehicles? Are they bought with the sole intention of impressing others? In effect, are they bought for the benefit of others, like a peer group that displays questionable values?

For a start, I really don't like those lifestyle 4x4's the motor manufacturers would like us to buy because they can charge such a premium for them. And in the US trucks don’t contribute towards a manufacturer’s fuel consumption targets. The Big Three side-stepped the governments targets by getting the public to buy pick ups instead of cars. It’s hardly surprising, then that they are in such crisis now after years of head in the sand management.

Lifestyle SUV's are too ponderous to give driving any enjoyment and they are not so good off road, either. Anyone who has read the excellent book "High and mighty" will have learnt that what lifestyle SUVs "say about their owners" is that they aren't very good drivers and are afraid of the world at large. Lifestyle SUVs have also become associated with obesity. Their owners have come to look like their cars. They might aspire to an active lifestyle but are really just couch potatoes who are so overweight their joints are worn out and they can't get down into a conventional car and would have to step up into something with high ground clearance. Lifestyle SUV's appeal to the "inner reptile". This is marketing speak for the selfish survival instinct. What SUV's really "say" about their owners is not very nice.

Where is the sport or utility in a sport utility vehicle or SUV? Somewhere along the line, these two aspirations seem to have cancelled each other out.

I met one of my girlfriend's friends once who drove around the city of Stuttgart in a Mercedes-Benz 4x4. She said she didn't want one herself, it was expected of some one in her position. What this position could be was never satisfactorily explained to me.

I don't have much enthusiasm for MPVs, either. They seem to be more sociable vehicles than SUVs and I think it is a laudable thing to want to take all your friends around with you. But surely you don't want to do all the time? When one of my mates wanted to go racing go-karts as part of his stag celebrations before getting married, he hired a proper minibus. (He also asked me to drive because I don't drink and every body else did and by bribing me with a free ticket for the go-karts I was more than happy to oblige.)

He didn't buy an MPV to make some sort of statement about his lifestyle or what sort of person he aspired to be. It seems that some people have been successfully persuaded to want to look as if they have so many friends with so many common interests that they need to drive a sexed up minibus. Is it just me or are they driving them alone for most of the time?

The only time I ever see an MPV with more than one occupant, is when they are doing the school run. Then they are packed. It just shows that these parents are unable to get their kids out of bed in time to walk to school. I walked passed a Toyota Space wagon once on a summer's day that had its windows open and it really stank of baby sick. An isolated incident, I know, but that is hardly aspirational and has forever tainted my appreciation of something worthy, worthy but not fun.

So having established that I have no enthusiasm for four wheel drive minibuses, what the hell am I doing by getting excited about UAZ-452s and World War II ambulances?

All I can say is that I know a Vintage Thing when I see one. I am reasonably confident that the Mitsubishi Shogun or a BMW X5 will never be a Vintage Thing. They don’t arouse my curiosity. They seem to be a mis-use of some great engines, which would go better in something lower and lighter. On the other hand, it seems obvious to me that it's only a matter of time before a Land Rover features as on this blog as a Vintage Thing.

Things become less clear when it comes to multi-purpose vehicles. The idea of something highly adaptable makes a lot of sense to me but by the time the market researchers and designers have got together to turn them into an MPV, I don't like that any more. Usually.