You Could Own A Far Less Rusty Honda S-MX Than Us

Over on the Car Throttle YouTube channel, life with Ethan’s £850 Honda S-MX Christmas present hasn’t exactly gotten off to a flying start. A trip to Japanese import specialists AutoMatrix UK has revealed rather a lot of issues, mostly with the biggest foe of so many old cars: rust.

It’s going to need a lot of work to get it roadworthy, but if you fancied your own example of Honda’s asymmetrically doored mobile bedroom, and can stretch to more than a very generous Secret Santa budget, you’ve got plenty of choice. As is often the case with these things, you just have to import.

At the time of writing, Goo-Net, an endless treasure trove of JDM vehicles for sale, lists 14 S-MXs for sale in Japan. Lots of them are the lowered, bodykitted Lowdown version, but we liked this standard trim version - not because it’s a massively interesting spec, although it does come with some rather fetching wood-effect trim on the dash, but because it’s quite possibly the most original, low-mileage S-MX in the world.

If there’s a concours event somewhere out there for JDM people carriers, this S-MX would surely be a shoo-in for a win. A 2001 model, it’s covered less than 4000 miles in its 22-year life so far. That’s fewer than 200 miles a year.

Its pristine condition is perhaps why it’s given a place in this dealership amongst some of the other cars you can see in the background, which include a Honda NSX, what looks like a rare Mercedes SLS AMG GT Final Edition, and many, many Porsches. Truly, these cars are in lofty company.

Fancy an S-MX that’s about as far removed from ours as possible? It’s listed at 884,000 Yen which, at the time of writing, is a smidge over £4700. Obviously, there are import fees to factor in, but even so, that’s about five and a half times more than Jack and Edwin paid for Ethan’s, for a car that’s probably in a lot more than five and a half times the condition…