Why is the adorable Honda ‘Super-N’ not called ‘Super-One’ in the UK?

One of the teeny stars of the 2025 Mobility Show is undoubtedly the Honda Super-N. It’s a tall, tiny-wheeled five-door electric city car that looks like a baby 1980s Group B rally champion. We’re big fans.

But you may have noticed we’re calling it the Super-N, but the rest of the world is calling it the Super-One. What’s going on?

A Honda spokesman confirmed to TopGear.com that Honda had intended to use the ‘Super-One’ name in all markets, but that’s proved a trip-hazard in the UK, because the name is already copyrighted.

In Britain, the rights belong to the Super One National Kart Championship, a grassroots kart racing series which has owned the name since 1983.

And the S1 series, as it’s often shortened to, is no fringe organisation. Over the decades it’s hosted future talents like Le Mans winner Allan McNish, Formula One racers Alex Albon, Zhou Guanyu and David Coulthard, and British F1 champions Jenson Button and Sir Lewis Hamilton. That’s some talent academy.

You might've thought ‘Super-E’ would be a more logical new name than Super-N, but this car is basically a hot hatch flagship for Honda's 'N Line' of kei cars, the standard versions of which won't be sold in the UK.

And while we’re sniffing out Super-N gossip, it’s not actually correct to call it a kei car either (which we’re still going to do). Honda insiders admit that the Super-N strays slightly out of the kei rules dimensions box, which state the car can be no wider than 1,480mm.

The culprits are those adorable pumped-out flared wheelarches, which will have to be sliced back a smidge for its home market. A similar fate befell the Suzuki Jimny, which lost its angular wheelarch extensions in Japan to sneak into the kei car loophole.