A pre-launch peek at Honda’s earth car

Sunday 25/02/2007 

Story:   A pre-launch peek at Honda’s new F1 car.

The actual official unveiling of this car is at 0830, tomorrow morning but those in the Japanese news press interested to film some thing of it for them selves were given a chance today. All broadcasts were embargoed until 0900 GMT the next morning, that is 1800 Japan local time.

An hour was set aside for us, and apart from ourselves there was only a crew from Fuji sports, the other news crews which had registered an interest had pulled out of this preview. Still I thought an hour was going to be tight especially as both crews wanted to film interviews with both the Japanese and British Honda representatives and would want the car as a backdrop.

The venue was a small room inside the Natural History Museum’s Earth Galleries, there wasn’t any direct relevance to the museum, it just seemed to be a location. I thought it was a shame it couldn’t have been done amongst the giant dinosaur skeletons, somehow the image of an extinct species along side something that if it doesn’t become extinct may be contributing to our own extinction….no apologies for my overly optimistic view.

It was the design that was being unveiled, the F1 car itself is still the same old beast, it has just been given a new, blue and green, sponsor free, picture of the earth skin, which I must say I like. The car still needs sponsors and still has sponsors but they are not being obviously shown. I guess the idea is that the new look will attract lots of attention and through that the sponsors will be known. Also the fact that they are involved in sponsoring a car that is trying to draw attention to the environmental and ecological issues can’t be bad for them. Honda’s representatives did like to point out that Honda has always been at the forefront in developing cleaner cars and technology as well as with environmental projects worldwide.

Regardless, the car’s design looks good and I am not even remotely interested in F1, but I do like maps and I do like our earth and I do hope it stays a good shade of green and blue.