While it’s common today for concept cars to offer a thinly veiled look at what’s coming to showrooms soon, not every concept car is a vision of the certain future. The more outlandish ones merely predict a future, one that might not happen, but one that speaks to the desires of the design team. However, a possible future is never guaranteed, so once the auto show tour is done, these radical visions often get put on a shelf. Left to collect dust. Forgotten about. But every so often, those futures of the past get a shot at redemption. Perhaps that’s what happened at Honda.
Have you seen the Honda 0 Saloon Prototype that was unveiled at CES? Wedge-shaped thing, extremely pointy nose, possible to mistake for a Lamborghini Gallardo if you’re a million beers deep and are squinting outside the bar after last call because the neon lights are bothering your astigmatism, does that ring a bell? Good. Keep that picture in your head, I want to show you something.
This is the 2003 Honda Kiwami concept, and does it look familiar or what?
Unveiled at the 2003 Tokyo Motor Show, the Kiwami took themes pioneered by Marcello Gandini for a Web 2.0 future. It was a four-door luxury sedan, sure, but it also featured an extreme wedge-shaped profile with one continuous line running from the low nose to the trailing edge of the roof.
Flash forward to 2025, and the 0 Saloon Prototype seems to carry a whole lot of cues from the Kiwami. Sure, the pillars and roof are black now, but that sweeping line from the leading edge of the bumper to the back of the roof remains. Echoes of the Kiwami’s horizontally slatted grille remain in the 0 Saloon Prototype’s front fascia, and even the greenhouse on this new prototype appears similar to the one on the Kiwami. Sure, the front quarter windows are larger and the silhouette of the rear quarter window is now part of the rear door glass, and the styling crease across the doors below the beltline has been drastically reduced, but the main elements are here, just stretched vertically and modernized.
There’s another commonality between the 0 Saloon and the Kiwami other than looks: electric motors were in the slide decks for both vehicles. However, instead of being powered by a battery pack, the Kiwami was a vision of a fuel-cell electric vehicle. What can I say? The future for hydrogen-powered cars looked brighter in 2003, as battery-electric vehicles had far more shortcomings than they do today. Battery tech was comparatively ancient to what we have now, batteries were still astronomically expensive, and the most recent well-accepted charging protocol involved the AVCON connector and predominantly relied on slow 6 kW Level 2 charging. Obviously, things have flipped over the decades to the point where battery electric power is an obvious choice over hydrogen. From a visual standpoint, the Kiwami concept embodied the “thin, light and wise” principles Honda’s going for with the 0 Saloon. The technology just didn’t exist in 2003 to make it feasible for mass production.
Of course, the big difference between the Kiwami and the 0 Saloon Prototype lies in the rear-end treatments. While the Kiwami featured a traditional trunk, Honda’s upcoming electric sedan features a kammtail, an abruptly lopped-off rear end. When paired with a Lamborghini Diablo-like kick-up in the body color surfaces behind the rear wheel arches, it adds a certain drama while potentially aiding aerodynamic efficiency.
Perhaps most of all, seeing huge chunks of the styling language employed by the Honda Kiwami make it over to the 0 Saloon feels like it resets the timeline. Sure, you can’t undo the global calamities that have occurred over the past 20 years, but this wedge silhouette takes us back to a time when the internet was still heavily a DIY affair, not an algorithmic hellscape for those with the loudest mouths. When digital technology was still exciting, rather than dread-inducing. Grab your T-Mobile Sidekick, crack a bottle of Bawls Guarana, and let’s hit the mall.
(Photo credits: Honda)
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
Honda’s Two Electric Prototypes Have 0 Names, But Asimo Lives On As An Automotive OS
-
Honda’s 0 Series EV Concepts Preview The Weird Future Of The Brand’s EVs
-
Honda’s Original Supercar Concept Is Back To Save The Universe
-
Listen To The New Honda Prelude Fake Its Shifts Without A Transmission
-
The Reborn Hybrid Honda Prelude Is Officially Coming To America Next Year
Please send tips about cool car things to tips@theautopian.com. You could even win a prize!
125 years of cars they could have emulated and then installed a quality electric drive system. There are handsome cars from every decade. Let’s put this idea away and try again. It looks miserable to live with on a daily basis.
Kiwami for the win.
I really like the general idea of this, but there are so many details I could do without: That hunk of black plastic that they couldn’t bother to clean off is all sorts of hideous, is it part of the protective shipping packaging like those pieces of tape on the front of Dodges?
That cheap toaster oven treatment on the rear window, Unless it dispenses pizzas, no thanks. Otherwise, I like anchovies, goat cheese, and caperberries!
2003, what a year.
The old one looked kind of like the razor blade Ford Fusions of 2010. The sail panels are huge, however, and I’d like to see the infinity-mirror lighting repeated in the nose instead of stealing headlights off a Gallardo.
If Remington designed a car.
The Hondassan Lectric Shave.
So are these gonna be like $100k?
After a couple of years on lease, probably.
The ‘modern’ concept has rear windows that can’t be utilized, while the ‘old’ concept has usable rear windows. Thus, the old concept is more realistic.
If Lexus could make it work in 1990, Honda can do it in 2025.
https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/2023/05/013-1990-lexus-ls400.jpg
It’s obvious that the window on the LS400 can potentially go more than halfway down just comparing the widest part of the window with the width profile vertically of the lower door. The old Honda prototype’s rear window is widest at the bottom, and the only part of the door that is that wide is right at the top. The window has room to potentially go down maybe two inches at most (and probably not at all in the prototype).
Front end of the original is a straight up Lambda T-4a shuttle.
It’s an older reference, but it checks out.
I’d just like to say thanks to both of you for a pair of comments that prove the internet is worth all the grief.
Excellent work.
Also, if that new one doesn’t have a rear window as it looks, then it needs to be killed with fire. THAT nonsense needs to be quashed ASAP.
Maybe it’s see thru, like the CRX was 😉
One can hope, but those long-ass not-see-thru sail panels make me think not. Plus it seems to be a thing all of a sudden. Another cost saving measure I am sure, glass is more expensive than a camera that you have to have anyway…
I drive with stuff in the back all the time. So so panel vans, semi trucks, campers, etc etc. I don’t think it’s really a big deal. The concept appears to have cameras instead of side mirrors too, so if that ends up happening you could just put the rear camera feed near wherever the side ‘mirror’ feeds are and it’s not really much different.
I had a CDL. I can parallel park a 45′ coach using the mirrors. I have NO interest in a car that I can’t see out the back of, there is just zero reason for that to be a thing. And screens are NOT the same thing as mirrors, they have lousy depth of field and are harder to judge distances in than a mirror. And certainly NO substitute for being able to just turn your head around and looking out the back of the damned car when it needed. There is just no need to make simple things complicated and make yet more things to expensively break. Because for sure cost savings to the manufacturer never seems to translate to savings on repair costs.
Too low to the ground, looks too much like a station wagon/minivan, and not butch enough for current sensibilities, it would never sell.
Like the old one better, but I like both. Still miles better than a Cybertruck, and much more interesting than yet another SUV/CUV/EIEIOV.
I was trying to remember what this concept was! Because there is no way this isn’t iterating on it.
They probably saw an id.Buzz cruising down the street and were like “OH HELL NO!”
The older design looks better, if you ask me. The “Lambo we have at home” nose and rear valance treatments just aren’t working, in my opinion.
Yeah, it’s not even close between the two, the Kiwami is much better looking, and also looks more like a real car that could be produced in reality, which is funny, considering it has the less practical drivetrain
The old one looks better. It also looks more like a dustbuster, but it also looks better too.
IMO, the backend looks like $#@&
I still have a bottle of Bawls that I won at a LAN party back in the mid-aughts. I assume it tastes like garbage the same as every other energy drink, but I keep it as a fun reminder of those good times. I see it’s still on sale at one of my local grocery stores, so I guess if I ever want to actually try it I can still get a fresh bottle.
I just wish I could say the same for Pepsi Blue
They’re kinda terrible, but probably the best tasting of them… A few of the local miata people used to meet up up late at night and play in the hills until early am pretty regularly, a lot of caffeine consumed. Never liked monster or rockstar but was hooked on bawls, lost, and redbull for most of my 20s. Esepcially redbull, I still still sorta crave one sometimes.
My favorite energy drink name of the times was Whoop Ass.
Yes, it came in cans, of course.
Yes, I may have held my finger to the pull tab and said, “Don’t make me open this!”