Friday morning 7:30am and we are on the bus heading to Mobility Resort Motegi for the Japanese MotoGP. It takes the bus about an hour from Utsunomiya to get to the South Gate at Motegi. I wanted to go straight to the Honda Collection Hall, which is Honda's museum of cars, bikes and racing machines. There's going to be lots of photo's in this post.
We had 2 hours before the MotoGP bikes were to be on track and I thought it would be less crowded on friday morning. I was right, there was less than 10 people waiting to get in when we arrived. It is a fairly unassuming looking building, quite plain on the outside with only a small sign out front, but it was full of exotic treasure's on the inside.
This weekend they were starting the bikes and doing sound demonstrations on some of the bikes if you were here at the prescribed times. We missed those as we were busy at the GP.
The entry foyer is quite spacious, the hall has over 350 items on display consisting of Cars, Motorcycles, Generator's, Jets and even Robots. This place is quite large, there are 3 full floors dedicated to the displays and I read on the internet that it was just refurbished in April 2024. The best part was that entry to the Hall is "FREE". Yes the magic word, secretly I would have paid to get in though.
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| "DREAM" Soichiro Honda |
The new layout of the Hall has cars and bikes intermingled amongst each other rather than what I read the previous layout was a car section and a bike section, so wandering around you now see everything together.
Hondas very first F1 race car from the early 1960's. They surprised everyone by winning the Mexican GP in only their second year competing using a V12 when everyone else was using V8 engines.
Honda are not scared to also display the competition which they were competing against. I was surprised to see an MV in amongst the Hondas.
Rotary hoe death trap....
Mum owned one of these C50 step throughs she bought new back in the 1960's. We only sold it about 2 years ago, it was in good condition too, but not as good as this one. We used to thrash it around the backyard as kids, this is what started the motorcycling bug for us........
Honda finished 1 & 2 in the 1987 F1 championship with Nelson Piquet & Nigel Mansell. I remember seeing Nigel Mansell blow a tyre at Adelaide GP at 300kmh. Amazing stuff.
The ill famed NR500 with its oval piston 8 valve engine may not have been the winner Honda was hoping for but what an intricate piece of engineering it is to behold. They later made the NR750 from what they learned with this project.
The mighty Africa Twin, the original Warhorse. The XRV was a 650cc engine compared to the modern equivalent 1000 or 1100cc bike.
They also had an original 1992 Honda Fireblade. My older bro was salivating at the gibb. He owned one in the same colour back in the day and was wishing he still had it.
The next bike is an exotic piece of kit. It looks much better in the flesh than it does in photos, the photos just don't do it justice. The famed NR750 with it's V4 oval piston engine and 8 valves per cylinder. There was only 322 of these made and are now worth over $100k.
It was interesting to see Honda's competitors bikes on display. The NSR250/500 was up against the Yamaha YZR250/500, the Kawasaki KR250/500 and the Suzuki RG250/500. It was good to see them all side by side.
Mick Doohan's 97 NSR500 Honda is on display. There is a spare engine on display next to the bike so you can see how the engine and exhaust system is attached. The lower 2 pipes are the front cylinders and the higher pipes are the top cylinders. Easy to tell if the engine blows which cylinders are the problem based on which exhaust pipes are smoking.
The modern era MotoGP four stroke missiles are also on display starting with the RC211V from 2002 with Valentino Rossi. The 990cc V5 engine bike swept the championship with Rossi aboard.
Who knew Honda made Robots. I didn't.
The iconic Goldwing with airbags......
Max Verstappen's Honda powered F1 car from 2019 is on display. This thing looks like its going 300kmh just sitting there. Was very interesting to see one up this close in the flesh. That cockpit looks like a awful tight squeeze.
What a fantastic experience it was to see the collection of Honda cars and bikes in the one location. We spent about 1.5hrs looking around which included a visit to the gift shop and cafe. It was a little rushed and we could have spent another hour if we were to read everything but it was just enough. If you ever get the chance drop in and visit you won't regret it.
Now back to the GP fun.
To be continued....
