Honda Racing Sports Concept

After featuring Spoon's Racing Fit, now it's Honda's turn to present their version of the Fit race-car. This particular Fit was presented in all its glory in Honda's Motorsport section of it's display booth at the 2003 (37th) Tokyo Motor Show that I attended 3 years ago. At that time, it took pride of place alongside Honda's BAR and IndyCar display, flanking these two top-level racing machines together with Honda's (at that time) just revised S2000 on the other side. When I laid eyes on this Fit, I was very excited and quickly asked the Honda rep if I can speak to the R&D engineers who came up with this car. I then learnt that they were using this specially prepped unit as a 'proposal' to their management for a 'one-make series' race Fit that Honda can potentially sell to enthusiasts. Unfortunately it seems that this plan did not go through.

Despite the best efforts of influencial people like Mr Spoon Ichishima and the legendary Drift-King Keiichi Tsuchiya who blatantly tells their fans that the Fit will only truly become a true sports-car when Honda introduces the Fit Type-R, Honda have refused to come up with a Fit Type-R variant. Actually when I saw this race-prepped Fit being displayed officially in Honda's TMS booth, and knowing Honda's overtly conservative approach, I was hoping that it might finally herald the coming of the real Fit Type-R. But of course now we all know this will never happen. With the next generation Fit/Jazz expected to come out next year (2007), perhaps we might see a Type-R version then.

Like the case with Spoon's Race Fit, I believe this feature article to be exclusive and probably the only published photos of this car anywhere. I like the livery of the car and what the Honda R&D engineers have turned this affordable hot-hatch into and I hope the photos convey a large part of what makes the car so intriguing to me at that time.

Honda's Racing Fit Concept in all its full glory. This was 3 years ago in the 2003 Tokyo Motor Show.

The L13A i-DSI engine is completely stock.

Special race wheels are used for the concept car.

As expected, the car comes stripped and is equipped with a roll-cage. Race bucket seats and a race steering wheel completes the package. And most unusually, the gearbox was swapped to a manual. Note that JDM Fits do not come with a manual option at that time.

A close look at the instrument panel, feature 2 meters : oil pressure and water temp, flanking the meters. Interestingly, Defi meters are used. Note the detail paid to integrating the roll-cage into the dashboard. Neat and tidy.