Author: Antony Ingram
Photography: M&M Automotive
Price: £2450
Mileage: 80,000
Condition: Joyful
Advert: M&M Automotive
Those familiar with Honda’s international output will be aware the company isn’t above a bit of silliness now and then, with cars such as the Beat and ‘Z’ kei cars, the boxy Element sold in the US, and some truly odd concepts in its back catalogue.
But in the UK, where Honda had something of a staid image in the late 90s, despite the best efforts that decade from the NSX and later the Integra Type-R, 1999’s Honda HR-V “Joy Machine” was something of a surprise.
This was Honda letting its corporate hair down, apparently in an attempt to court younger buyers that had so far avoided Soichiro’s brand in their droves. Print adverts depicted buck-naked twenty-somethings cannonballing off a pier into the sea, while a TV spot showed one speeding around a giant canvas, running over paint tubes, like someone had left the keys with Neil Buchanan.
It was certainly a quirky-looking device. Based on the nondescript Logo supermini, the Honda HR-V was initially launched as a three-door, with pseudo-SUV styling that didn’t resemble anything in particular at the front, had the vibe of a lifted hot hatch from the side, and was a spitting image of a Volvo V70 at the back, albeit crowned with a large carry-handle spoiler.
The interior was more trad-Honda, but traded blue rinse for blue fabric seats and door cards, and blue-faced instrument dials. For some reason, Honda made a big deal of the ashtray, which was a bit like a small bin and could be hoiked out of the centre console to be emptied, though as a certain James May pointed out when driving the Honda HR-V for Top Gear Magazine, you could already remove the ashtray from other cars, since that’s how you empty them. Today, simply the idea of a car having a prominent ashtray sounds a bit odd.
Honda claimed the car was the work of its “youngest, keenest, and most imaginative engineers”, though said engineers were more pragmatic with the mechanicals than with the styling. Power came from a choice of 1.6-litre petrol engines, one with VTEC (making 122bhp) and one without (104bhp), and while all had four-wheel drive initially, front-drivers soon joined the range, in a move predicting the future explosion of crossovers that also offered off-road styling without the ability.
Reviews were surprisingly positive for such a niche vehicle, praising the car’s sharp handling which stacked up well against an admittedly pokey lineup of contemporary hot hatches. Autocar even ran one as a long-termer in 1999 and called it “a car of real ability”, helped by the kind of reliability that you probably wouldn’t get from a contemporary Freelander.
Our unexceptional find, for sale with M&M Automotive in Hampshire, is a fairly early car, registered in 2000 (just sneaking into FOTU eligibility), and a non-VTEC model with two-wheel drive. Perhaps not the most appealing combination then, certainly in under-the-radar Nighthawk Black Pearl paintwork, but perhaps more Unexceptional as a result.
Importantly, being an early car it has the brighter interior rather than the toned-down cabin of later models, and it’s also the three-door version rather than the more practical but less striking five-door. It also looks in good condition inside and out, the underbody shots not revealing anything too scary, though the MOT history suggests rather predictably it’s suffered corrosion in the past – it is an old Honda, after all. It must’ve been for sale for a while too, since it hasn’t been taxed since January 2024 and the MOT expired in April 2025.
Proceed with caution then, but there aren’t many of these Honda HR-Vs left so the remaining cars are, for the right kind of enthusiast, probably worth saving. We can’t guarantee you’ll find joy in the Joy Machine, but the unusual shape will certainly stand out among the more conventional Hondas at Festival of the Unexceptional.
Were you a fan of the original HR-V, or did you think Honda had lost the plot? Let us know in the comments below.
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