By Jeff Glucker
Yesterday, Honda showed off its Chevrolet Apache pickup truck. This was an important vehicle early on in the timeline of American Honda Motor Company. And its place has been honored with a freshly restored truck done up to match the original.
Are there any other vehicles out there like this?
Has an automaker ever had an important model taken from another automaker? If so, let us hear about it. Also, what other old milestone or iconic models should an automaker remake or restore?
The Honda-restored Chevy Apache is a sweet machine. We’re sure that others in this same vein have to exist. Tell us about them below.
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Must have been disappointing to buy that and have everyone call it a Corvair.
How ’bout this early example of a tilt-bed wrecker home brewed by Marcus Motors of Denver, Colorado out of a 1952 Studebaker R16?
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”Has an automaker ever had an important model taken from another automaker? ”
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”Has an automaker ever had an important model taken from another automaker? ”
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The Russian GAZ Volga Siber might appear familiar to US viewers, from it’s previous incarnation. No more just recycled Fiat 124s in Russia.
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Yes, but a Chrysler recycled by Russians…it’s like hiding from the rain under a waterfall. The first GAZ was a copy of the Ford A, btw:
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This put me in mind of another Honda-GM project – one that GM may rather forget about. Another iconic – though lesser known – model was the CVCC Chevy Impala.
The GM CEO wasn’t interested in licensing Honda’s CVCC technology, and referred to it as something that “might work on some little toy motorcycle engine”.
Honda set out to prove him wrong, and had an Impala V8 engine shipped to Japan, where they engineered and installed a CVCC system, then shipped it back to the US where it passed EPA emissions testing without the need for a catalytic converter.
To put those figures from the EPA report into perspective.
The catalyst on the V8 achieved a 78% reduction in hydrocarbons, a 95% reduction in carbon monoxide, and a 91% reduction in NOx emissions.
Meanwhile,the CVCC technology pulled off a 98.5% reduction in hydrocarbons, a 98% reduction in carbon monoxide, and an 82% reduction in NOx emissions, and the manufacturing cost was lower without the rare earth metals of a catalyst.
The use of a prechamber and some form of stratified charge is strongly rumoured to be behind the low fuel consumption and high power of current F1 engines, and this work into lean mixture running has culminated in Mazda’s Skyactiv engines which combine diesel and spark ignition operation.
But without Soichiro Honda, himself, there, Honda doesn’t seem to indulge in engineering at the cutting edge any more.