Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Vintage 1982: The Honda Motocompo.



Via: 3yen
"The Motocompo was born in the 80’s, it is still so much ahead of its time..

ska band Madness was enlisted by Honda to do a series of cheeky City/Motocompo commercials.



The Honda Motocompo is a little toy for adults who were too old when Transformer robot toys first appeared. It is a motorbike, but it is also a toy. It is a statement. People who bought a Honda Motocompo at the time were cool, those who still have one are even cooler.

Designed as a companion to the Honda City series (aka Jazz in Europe), this minibike folds up and fits in the trunk of your minicar. When you live in Tokyo and you understand the value of space, both in the street, in your home, and everywhere you spend some time, you really value the designers at Honda who came up with this little guy. The City car spawn many babies worldwide, such as the Polo, the Smart and so on. Yet, the Motocompo died and got forgotten. Sure, half of the bicycles you see in the street of Tokyo are foldable, but in the times of portable music, portable computing, portable gaming, and portable video, where is the portable bike?...

Sometimes, you can even fine one on eBay, if you don’t want to burn money yet be a hipster, you can always build your own in folded paper (Japanese style all the way)"
Here' Anime from motorcycle geek turned manga artist Kosuke Fujishima's series Your Under arrest. Showing one of the main characters Natsumi Tsujimoto performing some pretty fancy riding trying to avoid being late on her first new day of work at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department,...only to be pinched by her future partner Miyuki.

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