Japanese car brands are adept at constructing concept cars like no other. Sometimes, however, they relinquish control, as happened in 1975 with the Civic Lady, which was designed and built in Italy. This unique car has been preserved and came into Dutch hands. We drove it.
The text “ESPACE HONDA” is etched in the upper right corner of the windshield of the small, light green car. It was most likely his entry ticket to a position on that brand’s stand at the Geneva Motor Show. The year was 1976, according to the scant information that exists about the car in question. Connoisseurs are now frowning: a Honda from the spring of 1976 must be a Civic. That small, convex model that the Japanese have been building since 1972 and with which they were also quite successful in Europe. But that Civic was a completely different car anyway than the station wagon-like appearance that graces these pages! We record how that story works from the mouth of Ronny Lucassen from Heijen, who at the time of our report was allowed to call himself the owner of the mysterious model.
Lucassen specializes in Hondas and knows which roads he has to take in Europe and beyond to get interesting examples of this brand. Trading under the name Honda Mobility, he imports not only young used cars, but also illustrious youngtimers from the brand. He will keep the 1987 Prelude from Germany, from the first owner who only drove 50,000 kilometers with it, for the time being. A quick round of the church with the gray sports coupe makes it clear why: the thing feels like a new one, lies excellently on the road and has a motor for kissing. “Honda only made that two-liter sixteen-valve for a year,” Lucassen teaches, “and all copies delivered in the Netherlands were white.” He does not lack ready Honda knowledge and that is an understatement. What a pity that there are – not only to his own frustration – gaps in his knowledge about the car that we want to capture in text and image today. But we’ll see how far we get.
To begin with, we can conclude that we are indeed dealing with a Honda Civic, which, according to inscriptions on the car, has been nicknamed Lady and which was built by Carrozzeria Coggiola from Turin. “The Lady was created at the initiative of Honda Japan and the Swiss importer, Honda Automobiles Suisse. The director of that import company was Claude Sage. A car enthusiast in heart and soul who had set up a private museum with only Hondas in Geneva, where the import branch was also located. He kept one of every boatload of cars delivered to him. He also imported models for the Japanese market, such as the City, Today and Inspire.” Honda Japan apparently found in Claude Sage the man with whom it wanted to start an experiment. “In Japan, they wanted to know what a renowned European stylist would make of their Civic. Sage probably then mediated between Honda and Italian Sergio Coggiola, who was given the task of shaping the project.” At the time, Coggiola was not a great figure like Giugiaro or Pininfarina, but he had made his mark as a car designer. He first worked at Ghia for fourteen years and then established himself independently. Since 1969 he has done many assignments for Saab and was regarded by many car manufacturers as a builder of prototypes. This made him seem like a good candidate to realize an Italian, or at least European, Civic.
It is not known exactly how Honda’s assignment to Coggiola was, but judging by the lines of the car, the Italian did not have to leave a square centimeter of sheet metal alone. Everything that is convex and round with the original Civic, became straight and tight with the car christened ‘Lady’ by Coggiola. What is called: the Civic Lady could have been a small Volvo, so to speak, were it not for the fact that the 740 Estate, the model of which the Lady strongly reminds, would only come on the market a decade later. We can say it even more strongly: the super-tight lines of the Civic Lady in 1975 were almost only found in other concept cars.
The only series-produced cars that had styling reasonably similar to the Lady at the time were the new front-wheel drive Volkswagens. The longer you look, the more similarities you see between the Civic Lady and, for example, the first Scirocco: the front with the four headlights that live together in one black grille and the fold that connects the wheel arches at the bottom of the flanks. This last detail is typical of the work of Giorgetto Giugiaro, who later also applied this element to the Lancia Delta and Fiat Uno. Coggiola may have stolen something from his celebrated colleague, but that does not affect the fact that the Civic Lady was very far ahead of its time as a design. We are not only referring to the clean lines, but in particular also to the extended roofline in combination with an almost vertically placed tailgate. An unheard of detail in 1975, especially for cars in the compact segment. Straight valves were then still the domain of station wagons, which were always considerably larger than the less than four meters short Honda. It was probably Volkswagen that first applied the idea of Coggiola on a large scale, on the Polo of the second generation. But then it was already 1981, five years after the Civic Lady’s exhibition debut. Three years after Volkswagen, Honda also gave in and built the third generation of the Civic in the same way. In short, the Civic Lady may have played a defining role in the minds of some great designers. Provided they also walked over the Honda stand at the Geneva motor show in 1976, of course.
Although the Honda Civic Lady had been sentenced to a behind-the-scenes role since its one-time ‘IPO’, Ronny Lucassen has been eyeing the car for about eleven years. “I knew Claude Sage had added it to his collection. About seven years ago he sold the car to another collector and I was able to buy the prototype from him recently. It is my sport to always get my hands on something special from Honda, and an even bigger sport to have such a model approved by the RDW, so that I can take it on the road with a Dutch license plate.” The latter has worked wonderfully. “But only because the Lady on the license plate is a regular Civic, which has been given different sheet metal. The judges told me to make the taillights a bit redder, stick two reflectors on the rear bumper and install orange instead of white blinkers at the front. Then the matter was settled.”
The car itself is full of funny details. Take the three-way turn signals at the front, for example, which can be called an innovative detail. The bumpers have the color of plastic, but are made of sheet steel. So very heavy, just like the rest of the sheet metal that Coggiola used. This is well expressed when you want to lift the hood and especially when opening (and keeping open) the rear hatch, which is apparently made of reinforced concrete: certainly not a job for a lady. Moreover, the third door will not hinge further upwards than roughly ninety degrees. Impermissible for a production model, but more than acceptable for this prototype, which brings all in all 920 kg to the scale. The standard Civic weighed just 680 kg.
The interior is apparently completely furnished to the Italian taste. The furniture is upholstered in pleasantly thick, beige velvet and there is deep-pile dark brown carpet from front to back and from left to right. Coggiola also provided a new brown headlining, beautifully finished, just like the entire car, except for some difficult fitting strips, edges and other trifles. The dashboard of the standard Civic has largely been reused. It is striking that the small instruments are new in shape, but the clocks and indicator lights have been maintained. The back wall is almost pitiful, because it is covered with glued (and partly released) pieces of wood grain wallpaper. There is a radio present, which still functions. For the antenna, the Italians chose the most unusual place imaginable. In order not to spoil the line of the car, the whip was not placed on a mudguard, but hangs under the car … The luggage compartment is as small as it is neatly finished. A hatch in the load floor gives access to the spare wheel, which is normally present with the car – best separately for a prototype that was not intended for road use.
Equally special is that the car is completely suitable for normal use at all. Everything works fine, as our short test drive shows. It is even an extremely easy-to-handle car, with a wonderfully humming 1.5-litre engine, a tight-shifting four-speed gearbox and a not too heavy steering. After a few moments you forget that you are in something very special. The papers that Ronny Lucassen found with the car include a letter from Honda Switzerland. In it, it declares to the authorities that a certain Monsieur Per Gabrielson has permission to enter the road by car. The Lady had an ordinary Swiss registration at the time. The counter tells that the Honda has now been driven for about 3,300 kilometers, probably mostly by that one privileged gentleman. The Honda Civic Lady is now no longer in the hands of Ronny Lucassen; he sold the car after a few days of online advertising to an American collector of exotic Japanese classics. That seems like a great new home for the Civic Lady, who in our opinion deserves to steal the show as an unadulterated fair babe somewhere.
This article originally appeared in Techzle Classics issue 4 of 2016.