In search for my wifes next car, which she wants to be electric, we decided to test the Honda E. After we tested the Mazda MX-30 the other day to have a somewhat direct comparison. To be honest the two concepts are very similar. same battery size, same power, most of the features are the same, the price is more or less the same,  handling is very similar. The main difference is: You get more car for the price from mazda when it’s about the size and overall costs. But first. when we arrived we got greeted by this nice Citroen Mehari. The local honda dealer is also a Citroen dealer and it’s not everyday you see one of those.

While waiting for the showcar to return from a wash to be ready for us, we walked around a bit and saw this nice EP3 waiting outside. I somehow miss the times when Civic typeR’s where small hatchbacks, compared with what you get today…

And then it came… in a rather unexpected funky poisenous green. Overall i really like the funky mirrorless Retro-design design reminding of the very early cars Honda made. It looks flawless and cool. Not weird at all but really modern and different….

First, the owner, which is one of the shop’s mechanic, gave us a little tour. And one of the main down points in my opinion are the many displays. while they have some funky and nice features and while everything is neatly integrated in the sleek (sadly fake) wood interieur, it’s a bit over the top and distracting in my opinion. And typical honda – the display menu looks like from the 1990’s with all the rectangular buttons in all the rainbow’s colours. There the mazda looks much more like a designer piece from a modern playstation game…

However the Honda beeing smaller and thus lighter, this thing goes like a rocket. In my opinion almost accelerating a bit too much for a small city bug. If you switch it to sport mode there’s not a real difference which is a bit strange.

Nevertheless. As a former honda fanboy i’m not a huge fan of their current cars. Especially their not-so-sporty ones. But this thing is beyond cool. It looks great, has great and futuristic features and drives excellent to be honest. The only downside for me is the price compared to the mazda and the fact they went a bit over board with all the digital gimmickery…

I would definitely buy it in white. it looks a bit ASIMO-esque in white, which i like. but today i stumbled upon a blue version displayed in a lokal supermarket, which also looked cool and a tad more adult, compared to the green one above. Well my wife is quite uncertain now. I was really positively surprised and would buy it in a hartbeat if i had the need for a small towncar…

I’m always fascinated what hides behind some of the doors you see every day. And most of the time you wouldn’t expect anything special behind a random barn-door.
That’s exactly what happened when i bought a microfiche reader for my old Datsun fiches from a Lady online. I went to pick it up last saturday and already was impressed by the nice, old toyota pickup in the entrance. Then the lady opened the gates to her garage and boy – i didn’t expect that! She used to work at a toyota dealership and had around 10-12 Vintage toyotas in various states, but most of them looked pretty serious and the selection of cars were excellent too!  She also had a nice range of toyota memorabilia and workshop tools and from what i understand she’s fixing those old cars all herself!

I was a bit in a hurry so i didn’t really have time to talk and look at the cars, but i promised to come back. What a collection. there was an office full of old Manuals and parts catalogues and she told me there’s a big spare-parts stock somewhere too. wow!

When i returned home, today i had to fix the two microfiche readers first and give them a proper clean, Had to glue back the mirrors and optical system and replace one of the bulbs.

And then finally both of them came back to life. Not that i really need them. i have the digital copy of the parts manuals too, but what’s the point of owning all thos old microfiches if you can’t even show them to someone, right? 🙂

They also came with a free set of various old Daihatsu microfiches. I don’t really have a useage for them, so i will go through them and put them for sale soon. I’m pretty sure somewhere in the world, someone is looking for exactly these old Daihatsu microfiches 🙂