Just as the cute and cuddly concept cars of the Tokyo auto show were about to eat us alive, we saw a racecar, a dirty one with tire scuff marks that no one had bothered to detail, and most unbelievable of all, it was a Honda Accord. Actually, to us, it was an Acura TSX. And instead of an 800,000-rpm VTEC motor under the hood, this car had an oil burner… Honda’s 2.2-liter turbodiesel four-cylinder.
The interior of this right-hand-drive car has been fitted with a roll cage and stripped of every seat except the driver’s, which is a full-on racing seat with a five-point harness. Honda has been using the car for endurance racing at the Twin Ring Motegi facility in Japan, and as you can see from this strip of tape, drivers kept track of how many laps they were able to get out of the car after each fill-up.
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