The Vintagent Ads: The campaigns that sold us.

HONDA MOTOCOMPO MADNESS (1981)

Run Time: 0:30
Producer: Honda Global
Director: Dentsu
Key Cast: Madness

FILM MAKERS

The Honda City and Motocompo ad campaign of the early 1980s is one of automotive history’s most iconic and brilliantly eccentric marketing blitzes. Launched by Honda Global in Japan, the campaign was designed to promote the “tallboy” Honda City and its revolutionary trunk-dwelling folding scooter, the Motocompo. The advertisements focused on urban mobility, showing drivers navigating traffic and parking their cars, then easily unfolding the 49cc scooter from the back of the hatchback to cruise through the city.

The English ska band Madness was prominently featured in the commercials, bringing an upbeat, quirky, and energetic vibe that matched the quirky design of the vehicles. The tune? In The City, of course. The wildly successful campaign was orchestrated by Japanese advertising executives at Dentsu, the largest advertising agency in Japan.

SUMMARY

1981 Honda Motocompo NCZ 50

Honda is tremendous successful at selling small and smaller motorcycles around the world.  Their ‘Cub’ series has been around 60 years and has sold in the tens of Millions, and their design team branched out many times to use the indestructible motor in a variety of chassis configurations. But the Motocompo NCZ 50 has nothing to do with the cub, or any of Honda’s scooters, although it does share a 2-stroke engine with other Honda products.

The Motocompo was sold as an integral accessory to the Honda City microcar in 1981, a ‘trunk bike’ designed to fold up neatly into a suitcase-sized box so it could easily be stowed in a special compartment of the City’s rear hatch.  The idea, one presumes, is to drive the City near to areas where no cars can travel, then use the Motocompo to reach further into the urban web.

The City’s luggage compartment was designed specifically for the Motocompo. The tiny motorcycle’s handlebars, seat, and footpegs fold into the scooter’s rectangular plastic bodywork, into cleverly designed recesses and hand-carry recesses. While Honda projected sales of 8000 Citys and 10,000 Motocompos per month (both were  Japanese Domestic Market only), it was the City that reached these sales targets, but over 3 years ‘only’ 53,369 Motocompos were sold.  The end of Motocompo production was 1983, and an average of 3000/month were built.  Hardly a failure, but neither was the Motocompo greeted with a firestorm of approval.

Nevertheless, the design of the Motocompo is ingenous, and perhaps the only real inheritor of the ‘Motosacoche’ concept, being truly a ‘moto in(to) a suitcase’! The design is impeccably 1980s, with its flush, integrated head- and taillamps, retractable everything, and terrific graphics.  Best of all, the City/Motocompo advertising campaign was launched with the British ska band Madness providing entertainment and music for the ad.  It, too, is a highlight of 1980s design! – Excerpt taken from Two-Wheeled Icons of the 1980’s, by Paul d’Orleans, The Vintagent, 2018

RELATED MEDIA

Need one? Keep an eye on Bring A Trailer!

Ads Film Music