honda historians required!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda#Company_history

the civic wan't the first honda automobile sold in the u.s. can someone
please fix this wikipedia page?

 

I think you are paraphrasing the article incorrectly. The phrasing looks
accurate to me. Wikipedia isn't the first place I've seen that narration.

I knew a guy that was about 6'2"/250 pounds that owned the first officially
imported US Honda model. Looked a little odd.

 

maybe, but the first model imported wasn't the civic was it? and it
would be good to get some more car history in there - it's currently
very motorcycle-centric!

 

The Civic is the first Honda I remember seeing or hearing of in the US.

 

And this is why a wikipedia is junk. "It's what I know..." when all
you know is bupkus.

 

The first Honda car I saw was the Honda 600. Imported in the early 70's
600cc engine , 2cyl I believe, not sure though. Punch in honda 600 on
whatever your internet is on . Scott

 

The wikipedia entry cites www.honda.com . Whence any gearhead can look up
the history of Honda in the U.S. and see that some sort of Honda car was
available in the late 1960s.

You don't like the wikipedia entry, Jim, then do the research and figure out
how to change it yourself.

 

what's got you today elle?

the reason i don't is because it's not something i know well. i've seen
others here write with much more confidence and authority on this topic.
just plagarizing stuff off the net is not my idea of valuable content.
thanks for asking.

 

The point is, a wikipedia is fucking useless. It's simply a compilation
of crap that people spew.

A wikipedia is nothing but the Usenet, distilled into a concentrated,
putrid form, full of the same crap from know-nothing people but stuck
all in one place for the mass of sheeple to conveniently browse in a
timely fashion.

 

Send an email to Wikipedia or whomever wrote that entry and say you noticed
a discrepancy between the wikipedia entry and the www.honda.com site, so
what's going on?

And no, I won't do it, because that would do you a disservice. This is "an
opportunity" for you...

 

I don't understand why wikipedia even exists. It's a distillation of a
Google Search, in some sense, but whoever gets there first is the
authority, unless challenged. The only intelligence there is plagarism.

 

Absolutely.

And yet, we're going to have 10 years of students using wikipedias as
their research sources. The smarter students will simply write
something down, go enter it into a wiki, then claim the wiki as proof of
what they wrote.

There *is* a reason for the editorial process.

 

Sorry, I thought you knew, and were just taking a poke at Wikipedia.

The first officially imported Honda car in the US was the N600 followed by
the Z600, a minuscule coupe with a twin cylinder 600cc motor that looked
like a motorcycle engine. The car I knew fairly well would actually list
to the left when its owner got in. I don't think they were at all popular,
and I remember when the Honda Civic was introduced. The same guy traded in
his Z600, which had over 100,000 miles on it, on a Civic. He didn't like
the newer car, too pedestrian ;-)

So the phrase "gained a foothold with the Civic", seems to be true.
A couple of other sites skip the N600 altogether, even if they mention the
S500 in a timeline.

Prior to that, although not officially imported, there was an S500 roadster
that I remember from the one of the sales guys at Berkeley Honda
(Motorcycles) brought in gray market in the 60's.

http://www.histomobile.com/histomob/internet/44/histo02.htm

 

Probably was.

Smaller than a Civic? The mid 70's Civics were so small you didn't get
into them so much as put them on.

 

wasnt the first model an s500 or s750, based on a motorcycle engine?

 

The page is actually correct.

"Honda was having difficulty selling its automobiles in the United States.
Built for Japanese buyers, Honda's small cars had failed to gain the
interest of American buyers."

This is correct.

"Honda finally established a foothold in the American market in 1972 with
the introduction of the Civic, larger than their previous models, but still
small compared to the typical American car"

This is correct as well. It doesn't actually say that the Civic was the
first car, just that it was the first /successful/ one.

What I think needs double-checking is this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_engines
which may well be correct, but is the sort of page that is more likely to
ontain errors and omissions.

 

Honda sold several tiny air-cooled models prior to the Civic. dold is
correct so far as I'm aware.

 

Wrong-o. They weren't that small at all.

Of course, I owned several--and you owned, let's see, NONE.

 

The advantage, though, is that errors can be corrected or added to by
ANYONE. Errors in Britannica print encyclopedias stay there for a decade.

You, Clarence, have something to add that is not currently there, the list
of models older than the Civic. Why don't you add it?

 

the only reason for putrifaction is that pissants sit on the side lines
and won't do anything about it. i contribute to wikipedia on the stuff
where i have expertise. if you have the same, and you see stuff you
don't like, fix it. if you don't, you have no business complaining.