Yahoo Autos Scrapyard Gem: 2007 Honda FR-V
The 2000s were something of a golden decade for "tall hatchback" MPVs in Europe, and the good news for Japanese manufacturers was that they had plenty of home-market-optimized vehicles designed for space efficiency that could be brought over to compete with the likes of the Renault Modus, Citroën Xsara Picasso and Hyundai Matrix. From my recent trip to the scrapyards of Northern England, here's a discarded example of a versatile Honda that we never saw in North America: the FR-V.
What really makes this car stand out is its interesting seating arrangement. There's a row of three seats in the back…
And another row of three seats in the front! The six-passenger setup used to be commonplace in big, bench-seat-equipped Detroit sedans of 50 years ago, but it's a tougher engineering challenge to do it in a small car that shares its platform with the Civic and CR-V. The strange-looking Fiat Multipla of the same era had a similar seating arrangement.
The middle front seat bottom hinges forward to make a center console.
The rear seats fold up to make more cargo space, which is respectable even with the seats in use.
In Japan, this car was known as the Edix. It was built from the 2004 through 2011 model years.
Not bad-looking, but certainly not the truck shape that took over the world soon enough.
