Call this a Ryu Asada passion project.
Jun Imai is dropping all kinds of goodies while he is in Japan, and after unveiling a trio of Skylines, he threw a beautiful curveball with this:
Yep, the Honda City Turbo. Some of you may have to google this one, and please do. There is more to this one than meets the eye. The Honda City is a tiny hatch made mainly for Japan, and the Turbo is its “hot hatch” incarnation.
The City Turbo is most definitely unique. The car is tiny, but the Turbo is aggressive in both performance and looks. There was also an option for buyers to include the Motocompo, and small, foldable 50 CC scooter that fit in the rear.
The Hot Wheels mimics that. The model is small, and the wheels are too. Think of it as close to the Fiat 500 released in Car Culture earlier this year. Obviously this one wouldn’t have a removable scooter – although a premium version a la the ’55 Panel with motorcycle is an enticing idea.
This also marks the debut of the brand new basic aerodisk basic wheel. A hub-like wheel like this is most welcome for Hot Wheels, and it looks perfect here. I can think of a slew of other models that will benefit as well. These wheels are small, also like those on the Fiat.
Lastly, if you are familiar with the Hot Wheels Design Team, it is pretty clear that this design comes from the Team’s resident Honda Nut, Ryu Asada. His last few IG posts make that pretty clear:
As is Ryu’s motto – “Honda for Life!”
That new Honda city turbo coming out is awesome. I will be on the hunt for this one next year thumbs up.
I wonder if the first release will have the same livery as the Honda Odyssey (and that Tamiya RC in the Instagram up there).
hotwheels please take all my soul and student loans
Now THIS is exciting…a funky little kei car is exactly what we need in the lineup. Hard to get a feel for size from this single pic, but based on the wheels it looks appropriately dinky. Fun little pug of a car, this. Now if we could get Hot Wheels to do a few more kei cars, we could have a whole herd of them! How about a Suzuki Cappuccino, a Honda Beat and a Nissan Figaro? And I maintain that a Subaru Sambar (in any of its forms) is called for too. Anyway, can’t wait to see this.
As small as this car is, it’s not a Kei car, This car is in the subcompact segment, cars comparable in size would be the Toyota Starlet and the Nissan March/Micra.
Honda did do a Kei car that looks similar to the city called the Honda today. It plays a large role as a tuned police car in the anime “You’re under arrest”.
Ha, I guess that just shows how jaded I am here in America…all the jumbo SUVs make the small cars seem even smaller than they really are. Thanks for the info, definitely thought it was a kei
A Hot Wheels Honda Beat would be awesome! The Suzuki Cappuccino as well. The others though, I think might be better served by Matchbox.
Autozam AZ-1 and Suzuki “Wizkid” as well.
This generation of the City is better known as the Jazz over here, I’ve only ever seen one In real life, and we never got the exciting Turbocharged versions. As for those wheels, they look very similar to the ones matchbox use, I bet a small version of the Real Rider Aero wheels would also look great on this car.
Now I just hope that Tomica will notice this release as well and release a de-Choro Q’d version of the City they did a while ago for the LV-N series.
The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, USA, has most of the Japanese Kei car ‘sports cars’ on display, along with lots of other JDM oddities.
Amazing to see a City, Today, Beat, Cappuccino, S-Cargo, Figaro, Pao, Autozam, Copen in person–all in one place–along with oldies like a Honda Z and Mazda R360…plus a brand new Honda S660!
Who would have thought that the coolest collection of Kei cars in America is located in Tennessee?
Worth a visit! Check out their website.
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Lane has been on my “must see” list ever since I learned of it a few years ago. I’m hoping to see it soon, I feel like it’s one of the only really renowned car museums on the east coast. I think they got at least a couple of their microcars from the Bruce Weiner collection that RM Auctions sold off a couple years ago. Definitely some interesting stuff, some of it is off the charts in terms of obscurity.
Try and go to the Lane on a Saturday when they run “basement tours”, so you can see ALL the cool cars they have. Phone ahead to confirm.
Yes, yes, yes!!! Now this is something I can get behind! My first car was a first generation Honda Civic hatchback, so I’ve always had an affinity for the brand. And this obscure (to most outside of Japan) little model has just the right look and spunk to make it worthy of interest among the kei car class. I love it! Can’t wait.
Many of the prototype photos from HW….can I go ahead and think 2018 will have another JNC Car Culture set? If they did it would be nice.
I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing another JDM Car Culture assortment…even though the haters will moan about it
Love it. I hope it’s remotely scale accurate, but seeing as it’ll be the size of the Abarth, It’ll likely be too big. But I’ll probably pick one up anyway and just keep it away from the other models. Because this is an awesome car, and the wheels look cool too. I wonder if the wheel debut is a strategic one to set HW up for a bunch of rally or touring cars in the future!!!
Awesome to see this and yes, I sure hope it matches Tamiya’s Willy’s Wheeler in its color scheme as the initiation of the Odyssey was in the RWB tricolor homage. I don’t know for sure without digging for what seems like hours on eBay, but those wheels more than slightly remind me of the wheels on the Go Kart from BITD, still might stand as the SMALLEST Hot Wheel car made and perhaps the more than often swallowed by kids under the age of 3, thus the warning labels. Seems lawyers have changed the face of the HW offerings much over the last 20 years, no surfboards or detachable thingies where there were a lot before and now they are coming back a touch, but not as much.
Thanks again Ryu for keeping Hot Wheels even more diverse in offerings from at least the JDM sector, would I be yelled off this page if I mentioned that we need a few more Euro molds as I enjoy the BIG 3 muscle, even though it seems to be getting very long in the tooth and I enjoy some, not all yet, of the JDM offerings, but not a lot of Euro cars just yet. It would seem in this iteration, OLD is something that intrigues and grabs us, so bring on the 80’s Euro and JDM, WE WILL BUY IT, some 90’s stuff too, just don’t bore us with the same muscle cars in their umpteenth re color and could you possibly steer a little wider path from the fantasy cars??? I think some of the fantasy(read non licensed) cars are even so grotesque that kids don’t want them in the birthday grab bags at all!!!!