HONDA BUILT THE WEIRDEST PICKUP TRUCK EVER MADE
Quick Links
While Honda does, in fact, have a pickup truck these days, rough-and-tumble work vehicles aren't exactly what you think of when you think of Honda, at least not in the US. Sure, Honda has the Ridgeline, a Pilot-based pickup truck with a five-foot bed and enough space for five people, but you wouldn't exactly use it to tow a 15,000-pound gooseneck trailer around. It's simply not meant for that sort of work load. It has unibody construction and drives and handles like a car, not like the traditional ladder-frame full-size pickups like the top-selling Ford F-150.
Honda
Japanese automaker Honda rose from the ashes of WWII and set about its business as a manufacturer of motorcycles initially, only launching its first car, the T360 kei truck, in 1963. Founder Soichiro Honda targeted the American market as the most important nut to crack, leading to generations of iconic nameplates like the Civic and Accord being among America's best-selling passenger cars. Today, Hondas are renowned for their safety, practicality, and reliability, with a sprinkling of performance from models like the Civic Type R.
In short, Honda has some experience with making vehicles boasting cargo beds that don't exactly resemble the classic pickup truck. If we dial back the years to 1999, Honda had just unveiled their strange pickup truck/sports-coupe concept to some excitement, and quite a lot of head-scratching. The model in question is called the Spocket, a weird name to match a weird-looking vehicle. However, the Spocket did have a couple of futuristic aces up its sleeve.
Mazdaspeed Concepts You've Never Heard Of And The Cars They Inspired
Mazdaspeed never built many production cars, but they could've had more if all these had gone into production.
The following information pertaining to the Honda Spocket sourced and cross-referenced from various sources tries to make common sense out of this odd concept vehicle.
Is That A Spocket In Your Pocket, Honda?
Honda Spocket Concept Quick Facts
- Only one example was produced
- Utilized Hondas then-new hybrid tech
- Its powertrain was loosely based on the Honda Insight's
- Its whereabouts are currently unknown
In the late 1990s, Honda was experimenting with hybrid-drive technology. Its first mass-market hybrid was the Insight, and while it was relatively successful, Honda wanted to branch out a bit and find new ways to implement the tech. Queue the Honda Spocket concept car, a sort of sports car/pickup truck hybrid aimed at younger folks with an active lifestyle. In Honda's mind, what better way to attract the younger crowd than with a sports car that can also haul your surfboards around without needing a roof rack? The concept debuted at the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show, an event long-heralded as the nexus of JDM automotive innovation.
Honda's Vision Of The Future Has Arrived... 40 Years Late
The HP-X was unveiled at the 1984 Turin Auto Show. Four decades later, the fully restored concept is coming to Pebble Beach.
As for the Spocket's design, it featured a normal front-row of seats that you'd find in most other vehicles. However, once you looked into its rear cargo area, you'd find a second row of seats folded flat into the cargo area. This meant that, when you weren't hauling your youthful accessories around, you could flip up the rear seats and haul your friends to the club instead. What's more, the Spocket could also be turned into a convertible by swiveling the hard top rearward over the cargo area. Honda's R&D Americas development center in Torrance, California took care of the Spocket's design.
The Nitty-Gritty
Unfortunately, the Honda Spocket was debuted without a functional powertrain. With that being said, because it's rumored to have been slated to receive a powertrain loosely based on that of the first modern hybrid, the Honda Insight, we can at least speculate about how it would have gotten itself around. Now, the Insight was no track monster, it was a rather underpowered small hybrid whose main focus was saving as much fuel as possible, so the Spocket would have, most likely, gone down this path, as well. However, because it was to be marketed with a bit of spunkiness to it, it may have received a bit more power, perhaps from a larger four-cylinder engine instead of the Insight's 1.0L three-pot.
We'll outline everything we know about the 1999 Honda Spocket general specifications below:
Powertrain | I3 or I4 hybrid |
|---|---|
Horsepower | ~150 hp (estimated) |
Drivetrain | AWD |
Transmission | 5-speed automatic |
Length | 168 inches |
Wheelbase | 108 inches |
*Specs courtesy of archival Honda press materials
We don't know how much it would have weighed, as the Spocket was never featured with a dedicated powertrain or suspension setup. However, if we do some speculating and assume it would have weighed about 2,800 pounds, a 150-horsepower output may have been enough to get the Spocket from 0-60 mph in about seven seconds.
Interestingly, would-be Spocket owners would have been granted the use of a Sport shift button, a drive mode that would have made its five-speed automatic shift a bit firmer and hold gears longer for a more vigorous driving experience. Its center console also had a button to control the opening and closing of the tailgate, along with a switch to control the folding rear seats. An audio equalizer also sat on the center stack.
A Car For Younger Folk
As we mentioned earlier, the Spocket was aimed squarely at those whose interests aligned with a younger crowd, particularly the youth of the Y2K era. Back then, CDs were still the best way to listen to music, and having a car with an interfaced audio equalizer was something to be proud of. Basically, what Honda saw was a marketing opportunity that could hit both the younger crowd's interest in outdoor activities, along with their want and need to socialize, be it at clubs, the beach, or the gym.
The Coolest-Looking Concept Cars That Debuted In 2024
2024 has been a great year for concept cars - here are some of the favorites that blew us away.
The Spocket was supposed to be a great fit for all of those reasons listed above. On top of it all, the Spocket was styled to match Hondas idea of an aura of youthful vigor. The concept model was finished in red, a color meant to excite. Its interior was designed to look like what seemed to be a booth at a trendy restaurant, with its flat dashboard and red-trimmed leather. At the same time, its cabin also resembled something akin to a spaceship, just by looking at that triangular steering wheel and funky, floating center console.
The Spocket Never Made It To Production
The Honda Spocket, while innovative, was never slated for production. Sadly, it seems when the motoring world is presented with futuristic and fresh designs, they're either severely watered down and then put into production, or they're simply forgotten about entirely. The latter case is what happened with the Spocket. These days, finding any info on the Spocket apart from a few general facts is difficult, as even Honda itself seems to have largely scrubbed itself of the thing.
The one and only Spocket's whereabouts are currently unknown. After it made its rounds at a few auto shows, including the 2000 North American Auto Show and the 2000 LA Auto Show, it spent some time in a few museums, mainly Honda's own American Honda Museum. However, the exhibit disappeared, and now nobody knows where it is, apart from a supposed few in the know.
2025-02-15T11:43:39ZSources: Honda, Supercars.net, Motor1.com.
