Gixxer-swapped Honda N600 is a screamin' mini Hoonitruck

5 years, 2 months ago - 8 January 2019, Autoblog
Gixxer-swapped Honda N600 is a screamin' mini Hoonitruck
It has 190 horsepower, weighs only 1,075 pounds and is seriously tiny

One of the biggest advantages of a motorcycle is its lightness. Pair that with the massively powerful engines going into modern bikes, and they're lightning-quick even in comparison to today's sports cars. A man named Alex Saint wanted to find a way to benefit from these principles of a motorcycle's performance but not actually ride a motorcycle. So he stuffed a 1000-cc engine into an old Honda minitruck to make a wacky homage to Ken Block's Hoonitruck.

Saint's build is the fruit of years of hard work and crafty engineering. He bought the 1971 Honda N600 in 2015 and has been tinkering with it ever since. Today, it's a bonafide badass little racecar (seriously these things are TINY). After removing the stock engine from the front, he dropped the engine from a 2013 Suzuki GSX-R1000 into the bed.

As part of adapting the drivetrain to fit and work in a veritable go kart like this, Saint uses a six-speed sequential gearbox with a hand-lever that works like a bike foot shifter. The shifter has a clutch lever on it, and first gear rocks forward, while the other five gears rock back.

Giving the truck extra flair and capability, it sits on 8-inch wheels with beefy 9.5-inch-wide, 18-inch-tall tires. A full tube chassis keeps the thing from completely tearing apart.

According to Saint, the truck only weighs 1,075 pounds, and the motor is putting out about 190 horsepower, which makes for a ridiculous power-to-weight ratio. For comparison, the 2019 Mazda Miata makes 181 and has a claimed weight of 2,339 pounds with a manual transmission. We all know how light and flickable Miatas are.

Saint frequents the drag strip with his N600, and he says his best time in the quarter-mile was 12.3 seconds at 167 km/h. It's at the track where Saint's ride caught the attention of popular racing video platform 1320 video and subsequently another vlogger named Christian McMaster. He had the fun opportunity to do a full feature on Saint and his tiny Hoonitruck, including a ridealong. Check it out above.