Honda/Newscom
The Honda Skydeck, a six-passenger concept vehicle, in shown at a press preview in Tokyo on Sept. 18.
Goodbye, Honda Odyssey. Hello, Honda SkyDeck concept.
Forget that aging Previa parked in the garage. The Honda Skydeck concept car promises to make the minivan cool again.
By Matthew Shaer | 11.04.09
Don’t get us wrong – in no way are we saying that you should ditch your sports car and invest in something more spacious. But hey, you could do worse than saving your pennies for the Honda SkyDeck, the six-seat hybrid minivan unveiled at last month’s Tokyo Motor Show.
The SkyDeck – shown at right and up top and in the video below – is widely seen as a potential successor to the Odyssey, Honda’s current mini-van. How far off is the SkyDeck? Who knows. For now, it’s just a concept car – a glimmer in the eye of a few top Honda designers.
Writing on Autoblog, Sam Abuelsamid warns auto aficionados not to get their hopes up:
Unlike the CR-Z which is nothing more than a thinly veiled preview of an upcoming production model, the Honda Skydeck remains a pure design study at this point. While most automakers would provide a full list of specifications for a concept that is nothing more than a fiberglass buck, Honda isn’t bothering with even that. The only thing the automaker says about this Tokyo Motor Show star is that it’s a theoretical hybrid.
Still, there are a few things a savvy spectator can glean from the Honda SkyDeck concept model. First and foremost are the doors, which swing up like a Lamborghini’s. Up top, there’s a glass roof, and inside there’s the kind of detailing one might expect in a stretch limo.
In a post for Jalopnik, Ray Wert stresses that the interior is what makes the Honda SkyDeck concept so interesting:
Pull off those sliding and scissoring doors and let’s look at a passenger cabin that looks like what would happen if Ikea designed a car interior entirely out of balsa wood and pieces of ASIMO. Still, there’s a certain beauty to the uber-minimalist interior and its center-mounted stackable floating seats for easier access to the third row. Passengers can then soak up the sun through the breathtaking all-glass roof, or just sit back and relax.
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3. Reid | 11.05.09
So how do you enter this vehicle while it is parked in your garage or a public parking ramp? Looks like these front doors need significant clearance.
4. Jason | 11.05.09
I doubt this ever makes it here. Mini-vans are about roominess and convenience. This seems like neither. Although it looks ‘cool’, a nice re-design of the Odyssey will be fine.
5. dale | 11.05.09
Really, when was the last time YOU saw a concept car make it to production. All that money and research for little pay-off. Perhaps that’s part of why American car companies have done so poorly-they have produced fantastic concept cars but look what has come off the lines . . . .
6. sunstupor | 11.05.09
umm, unless that glass top, has a photovoltaic covering, this car will Tank in the SW.
Too much sun is dangerous.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
2. Goodbye, Honda Odyssey. Hello, Honda SkyDeck concept. (The Christian Science Monitor) | Narrotin News | 11.04.09
3. Twitter Trackbacks for Goodbye, Honda Odyssey. Hello, Honda SkyDeck concept. | csmonitor.com [csmonitor.com] on Topsy.com | 11.04.09
6. Three good green reads – futuristic cars, solar power from space, and wind power from on high | csmonitor.com | 11.16.09
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1. bmesc | 11.04.09
If you are going to talk about this, you need to mention the Nissan Forum. It’s been around longer and it looks like Honda was well aware of it.