Modified Hondas celebrate brand heritage at SEMA

Honda is celebrating 60 years of its heritage at this year’s SEMA show, but four cars stuck out to us as the cars you, dear MOTOR reader, are most likely to love.

Honda Civic Si Drift Car

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The first is a Civic that goes sideways, built by Jeanneret Racing and Olson Kustom Works. It’s been converted to Formula Drift specification from the original FWD platform, with the engine re-mounted to power the rears – obviously.

Oh, and while it was out, the engine was given a little tickle. A 691kW tickle. We have to imagine this would be a lot more fun than a stock Civic Si.

1968 Honda S800 Coupe “Outlaw”

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Injecting a bit of old school cool into the Honda stand is this tough ‘outlaw’ inspired S800. Built in the same vein as the Outlaw Porsche 911s favoured by the likes of Magnus Walker, this S800 was built by actor Daniel Wu.

Wu decided to retain the original engine and have it completely restored, while customising the rest of the car around it.

A GReddy exhaust with middle-exit pipes and a body kit built by Pandem’s Kei Miura (think rocketbunny) make the S800 look and sound tough, but its paint and interior are quite reserved and tidy.

Super Street 2000 Civic Si Challenge Winner

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If you wanted to be reminded that Need for Speed: Underground 2 exists, this car is for you.

Built by US publication Super Street, which oddly enough now has its own game, the goal for the Civic was, with a $10,000 budget, to turn it into “a show, drag, or race car, or a combination of all three.”

This 1999 car ended up winning the ‘Civic Si Challenge’ in 2000, and was then turned into a 1:18-scale model by Mattel.

Honda N600

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We’ve already covered this one, but it was worth mentioning again here because it is so very cool.

It’s packing MX-5-derived suspension, a Honda VFR800 V4 engine capable of 12,000rpm, and weighs just 635kg with about 250 per cent more power than stock – 86kW over the original engine’s 34kW.