Some cars are polished, some have patina. This one appears to have leprosy. A scruffy little Honda covered in rust and dented like a dog-chewed golf ball, it looks like a mashup between Mad Max and a Despicable Me minion. Can you get an eye infection from looking at pictures? Maybe we need some sort of disclaimer.

But as ugly and scabby and possibly tetanus-laden as this car might look, it is also genesis. This is the American Honda Motor Company's first competition machine, a race-prepped N600. It's a genuine Baja 1000 warrior, and an unlikely survivor. It was also unsuccessful in period, is more than a little dangerous, and actually driving it around is probably a Very Bad Idea.

But, last year, we had a go at it anyway.

Brendan McAleer

Tim Mings, owner of Honda N600 specialist Merciless Mings, began the ticklish operation of getting this old battler to cough to life. In the Sesame Street of automotive enthusiasm, Mings is Oscar the Grouch. He is grumpy and irascible and a magnet for little tin cans with Honda badges on them. There's probably no better N600 expert on the planet, and the cars keep finding their way here, to his garage on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

"The story of Honda American racing begins here," he says. The Baja car fires up with a sound like a lawnmower plowing into a rock garden. He gives me an evil grin.

We covered Mings a few years ago when he stumbled across and subsequently restored the very first Honda car to arrive on U.S. soil. The Honda N600 bearing VIN #001 was one of 50 1967 prototypes used in testing, and one of only a few that escaped the crusher. Mings found it by chance trailered on a side street, scraped years of grime off the VIN plate to discover its provenance, then brought it back to gleaming perfection.

Not so much this thing. The little 598cc two-cylinder engine sounds extremely pissed-off at being roused from slumber. It has a few hot-rod parts bolted to it, and might be making as much as 50 hp. Double-digit horsepower shouldn't be intimidating in a car, but it's more than you'd want to have applied to your vulnerable extremities, and "chainsaw accident" is very much the vibe the N600 is giving off. It growls out unburnt hydrocarbons and refuses to idle properly.

Brendan McAleer

Here's the quick history lesson on Honda's early cars. The very first in North America were S600 roadsters, sold out of a handful of motorcycle dealerships in Canada. First on U.S. soil was the N600, an adaptation of the N360 kei car, fitted with a larger 0.6L engine for interstate travel.

Think of the N600 as a sort of proto-Civic, and you'll get the general idea. It weighed 1200 lbs, made 35 hp from a tiny inline-2 (the sand-cast engines in the prototypes made 45 hp), and was generally light, cheerful, and mostly had the lifespan of a chocolate coffee mug.

American Honda moved about 25,000 N600s before the Civic arrived as a more resolved product better suited for North America. Being so disposable, it's not really worth restoring them, so only a handful are still on the roads today, though you see them cast off in back lots all over L.A.

"If it doesn't have a Merciless Mings sticker on the back," Mings says, bluntly, "it's probably not running."



Tim Mings, sitting in the first Honda race car. Brendan McAleer

He found the Baja racer mouldering in a Seattle workshop, stuffed with a host of spare parts (including the original wiring diagram), packed it into a Ford Transit, and hauled it down to Los Angeles. A new fuel cell and some cursing, and the thing actually ran.

I climb over the roll cage into the bare metal interior, toggle the fuel switch on, and crank the starter. The Baja car snorts up, slightly smoother now that it's warmed up—that lawnmower is now mulching pea gravel. Mings removes the "parking brake"—a short length of 2 x 6—and I head off out of the industrial area where the Merciless Mings shop stands.

Brendan McAleer

The Baja N600 feels less like a grumpy old racing car than it does a military surplus vehicle designed for Oompa-Loompas. It morphs even the smoothest California streets into washboard, has the turning circle of the USS Nimitz, and is about as loud as sticking your head in an industrial dryer. And about as comfortable. And as hot. In the desert, it must have been a pint-sized toaster oven.

In 1970 this car contested the then-new Baja 1000 in the hands of Bill Robertson Jr. and Dave Ekins. An N600 was an unusual choice, but not an unexpected one. Ekins and Robertson were experienced off-road racers and pioneers. In 1962, they paved the way for the original Baja 1000 aboard a pair of then-new Honda CL72 250cc "Scrambler" motorcycles, Honda's first dirt bikes.

Dave Ekins at Baja, 1962. Courtesy Dave Ekins

Ekins was brother to Bud Ekins, the stuntman from Bullitt and The Great Escape, and both brothers had been teammates with Steve McQueen in international off-road motorcycling trials—the N600 raced under the number 278, as McQueen often did. Aboard their 250cc Hondas, Dave initially ran the 1000 miles from Tijuana to La Paz in a record of 39 hours and 54 minutes. Robertson was just an hour and a half behind, having lost a cylinder several miles from the finish.

In 1967, the year those first Honda prototypes hit U.S. soil, the Baja 1000 became a race. Bruce Meyers broke Ekins' record in his Meyers Manx buggy in April, and by June and July, multiple cars were contesting the distance. Ekins and Robertson decided to replicate their spearheading Baja run in a four-wheeled Honda product.

Courtesy of the Petersen archives

They did so in 1970 in this N600, modified for off-road racing with a roll cage, big tires, and a retuned engine. On paper, the fuel-efficient and reliable little Honda should have been just as successful as its two-wheeled brethren. There was just one large Achilles' heel.

"The car had been prepped by a road-racing group in Michigan," says Ekins, speaking from his home in Calabasas. "I was able to briefly test it on a dry lake bed in the Mojave, and it worked, but there are no bumps on a lake bed."

The N600's suspension had been raised by 4 inches to increase the travel, but it still retained the standard stops. At full droop, the CV axles would come adrift, and the car would land without the ability to get its meager power to the ground. Ekins or Robertson would haul himself out of the co-driver's seat, wriggle under the car, and jam the hub back in.

"We made it about 68 miles," Ekins says. "It would have needed a lot more testing and development to get it ready for Baja, but we had to use what we were given."

Ekins and Robertson wisely decided to call it quits before getting stranded in the middle of nowhere.

It's worth noting that, the year previous, Pete Brock had piloted a works Datsun Bluebird SSS (basically a 510) to a respectable fourth-place finish in the Baja, and he just left the car behind in the desert. That the N600 got towed back, and subsequently survived over the years, is something of a miracle.

Brendan McAleer

Returning to the garage in one piece also feels like a miracle. Yet as battered as it currently is, the Honda N600 never faltered once it got going. It's a demented old scrofulus Yorkshire Terrier of a thing, but it's still a Honda.

Today, Honda Performance Development will sell you a very competent turn-key Civic Type R touring car, with a 2.0-liter turbocharged engine built in Ohio. Or, if your wallet extends to it, you can drop a half-million on a NSX GT3 and go try your luck against Ferraris and Aston-Martins.

Or you can simply cheer on Honda Offroad Racing's 550-hp Ridgeline, as it adds to its well-stocked trophy cabinet of class wins and podiums. Powered by a twin-turbo version of the Ridgeline's 3.5-liter V-6, it's the spiritual descendant of the Baja N600.

Honda’s Ridgeline-based Baja race truck. HPD

Ekins was reunited with the N600 last year, two trailblazing desert warriors shaking hands once again. The man went the distance over the Baja. The little car didn't. Yet, looking back over 50 years of American Honda Performance, perhaps the Baja N600 deserves respect—if not as a champion, then as a survivor.

Some pioneers are winners out of the gate. Some are merely taking the first steps on a longer journey.

Dave Ekins’ signature on the door panel of the first Honda race car. Brendan McAleer

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