Friday 20 April 2018

A fish out of water: A Honda Motocompo in the Australian outback, 1983.

It makes no sense. None. Zero.

Surely someone's having a laugh.

A tiny fold-able Honda motorcycle, designed to fit in the boot of a small hatchback - a little early-80s Honda commuter dream-team - purpose-made for the busy streets of Japan; in Australia, when new, registered to a state in central Australia that happens to have a population density not too dissimilar to the moon?

It's the minibike from Dumb and Dumber meets the landscape of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

I touched on these in a post back in 2015, but again, briefly: What we're looking at is a Honda NCZ50 Motocompo. One of 50,000+ Honda pumped out between '81 and '83 to fit into the back of the then-new City hatchback. This one is yellow.

..and has a matching open-face helmet that's just a little bit adorable.

49cc, 2.5hp, 50km/h flat-out-with-a-tail-wind, and some of the only unrestricted highway in the world. Stick to the left!

The only thing not to like is that I still haven't got one!



Done. Adorable..


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