While Tokyo Auto Salon’s custom auto show won’t open for in-person visits next week, it will operate virtually, and auto manufacturers still have plenty of beautiful revelations. We’ve already seen Daihatsu’s charming crop of little habits, and now Honda has showcased a number of its machines, one of which is an off-road oriented Honda Fit and the other a Honda N-Van ready for use as a food truck.
The Fit is shown above and is based on the already crossover-ized Fit Crosstar. The Crosstar features plastic fender extensions and body trim, a unique front end and a light ride-height lift that’s tuned for unpaved roads. This modified model gets a further redesigned front bumper with a slimmer main grille, a simple pill-shaped lower grille with large fog lamps and an aluminum accent meant to evoke a skid plate. The suspension doesn’t look like it has been further changed, or if it has, it’s very small, but there are white-lettered all-terrain tires fitted to plain black steel wheels. The tires look quite long, which perhaps gives the Fit a little more ground clearance. It’s all topped off with a Yakima roof box and cargo boxes, plus a robust brown and black color scheme.
The custom-built Honda N-Van, strangely called “3rd Place Van” according to Google Translate, looks like it would be much happier on the sidewalk and parking lots. It has turned into a small food truck of sorts. On the outside, it has been given a cover to make it look like it was made of bare aluminum, like an old and much larger commercial vehicle. It works great with the N-Van’s boxy shape and the wavy accent lines down the side. Adding to that commercial look are amber marker lights above the windshield and black steel wheels.
It’s harder to see what Honda did inside to make it a food truck, but we can see a counter in the back, and the front areas can hold food to buy and other decorations. Honda seems to be making the most of the N-Van’s surprising amount of space and access; all of the N-Van’s seats fold flat into the floor, except for the driver’s seat, of course, and there’s no pillar between the front and rear doors.
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