To Japanese Hondiste   Please let me introduce myself, i am Philippe Lalanne and i have in charge since 3 years the french Honda classic car club :S600/800 N and Z. It was a big surprise a afternoon of one day , when i found your home pages, i was looking to find some news about the 24hrs race in nurburgring from last month. So we are very happy too ! Because all japanese enthousiats are going to have news from France and Europe, it's really unbelivable 'le Hondiste' in Japanese !  By the way, you know it's not very easy to have information in Europe. All we know about the story of Honda and about the story of our 'small' cars is coming from some rare withnesses from this time. One our member , Yves Derisbourg, is journalist and he was trying to make a TV report about Honda motor Co and especially  mr Soichiro Honda when he suddently died in 1992. Those pictures are maybe one of the last of mr Honda.  TV reporting was not finished at time and Yves decided to write a book about mr Honda's life .  We hope you know this book simply called "Mr Honda". Yves Derisbourg is the son of Jacques Derisbourg, president of Honda France 1964-1993.  So we think we would like to publish our newsletter every 4 months ( 3per a year) i can send some infos and pictures to you every 3 months. We hope we could like to send a good news for Japanese Hondiste! Thank you. by Philippe Lalanne

Monsieur Honda (Mr.Honda) Top:  No.32s"Le hondiste"and "Monsieur Honda".  They are undoubtedly the last photographs taken of Soichiro HONDA: They were made at the time of the ultimate visit in AOYAMA CENTER of Tokyo (the building of Honda on the ' Champs Elysees' of Tokyo), with my request, to carry out two filmed interviews there.  The first was carried out in one of the shows of the stage of the presidency, and the second in the space of exposure of the ground floor. During this visit , Soichiro HONDA discovered the new  ' BEAT' whose my woman says to him that  it was looking  the same like the S800 convertible.  Then Soichiro Honda made him a revelation... It showed to him that at the time S800 was really his car, his child,  each model was signed... he took a paper, a pen and signed.  The signature of Soichiro Honda was neither more nor less than the certified copy of the HONDA initials which are on the wings of  S600/800. It is thus itself which 'design' its name, when it created the car, with the manner of Pinninfarina. His name was the only word in our writing which could write Soichiro HONDA which could speak to no other language but Japanese, if it is not that of the clur, and also a rather incredible international language: a language which was very personal for him and which, thanks to its mimicry and gestures almost always punctuated of bursts of laughter, made that everyone thought of knowing to speak Japanese with him.  These photographs are a formidable memory which I share with all the members of my team of turning which, at the time of this voyage in June 1992, passed more than 15 days to Japan, so much in the industrial universe of HONDA than in the day  life of the creator. Unfortunately,  Soichiro HONDA left us a few weeks later, before to have even finished the turning of the interviews which were to punctuate the 52 minute old film that I had undertaken to produce. Not having the images necessary to the completion of film envisaged, this one was abandoned and thus was born the book. Written thanks to my memories and to the interviews with broken sticks recorded on my mini cassette recorder, realized during the preparation of turnings which were to be spread out over one year and to take us along to Japan, in the USA, to Switzerland and France. When its disappearance was revealed, the services of Nobuhiko KAWAMOTO, the President of the time, required of me to forward to them the photographs and the rushes of films made with Soichiro HONDA at the time of this ultimate visit so that the site is reinstalled same manner the day of mourning.  I do not know if the film would have made a televisual success, but the book all the same was translated of 14 languages, of Icelandic to the Russian while passing, of course, by Japanese, and was distributed in more than 25 countries.  By Yves Derisbourg

(C) 25/AUG/2000 Photographs, Text reports by Club Honda S800 N&Z France.
(C) 25/AUG/2000 by Hirofumi Makino