Spoon Sports Japan shared some exciting news over their blog showcasing the initial research and development towards making the new Honda Civic Type R more of a driver’s car then it already is.
Although the American market has been enjoying the new Honda Civic Type R for more than a few months now with aftermarket companies in the United States already churning out parts, Japan just got the Honda Civic Type R. According to Spoon Sports Japan in their blog post earlier yesterday (Dec 8, 2017) Type one, their affiliated race garage and tuning arm of Spoon Sports, is actively addressing some of the concerns that new owners of the Honda Civic Type R will have, mainly making the car more of a driver’s car on the track.
Whereas some tuning companies are focused on making power adding bolt-on products to boost power, Spoon’s tuning philosophy takes a slightly different approach focusing more on handling and maximizing the potential of Honda’s engines. Their latest blog post confirms this approach. According to Spoon and their Type R development, they’re using a similar approach for developing parts like they’ve done for other chassis before the FK8. Below is a direct to English translation, but you get the jist of what Type One is saying.
Measure in the garage, run on the track and verify with the garage, this is the method of our spoon parts development that we have cultivated through the race activities from the 1980s such as N3, S8, successive Civic etc.
According to Spoon Sport’s early testing, it looks like the Honda Civic Type R is truly a handful for their test drivers. During high cornering techniques which subjects the chassis to extreme yaw and G forces, it was observed that the front tire loses grip thanks to intense torque forces from the engine.
Spoon also pointed out that they’re aware of cooling inefficiencies with North American testers in hot weather climates but does concede that the bumper’s front end design is doing its job in their initial Japan cold weather testing.
Right now, it looks like Spoon Sports is focused on introducing a suspension upgrade package that will be an upgrade to the driver without being too harsh. It looks like they’re specifically working with a KYB damper specialist to come up with a good spring to swap in place of the stock one as both the Si and Type R come with adjustable dampers.
Earlier this week we reported on Spoon re-releasing the SW388 wheel and making sizes and specs that will suit the 10th gen Civic.
I’ll be keen to follow up on updates from Type One and what kind of products they’ll come out with for the already capable Civic Type R and base model Civic. As their Honda Civic Type R is both a rolling lab test and the official Spoon Car for their shop, I’ll also be looking forward to when they set some hot laps on some of Japan’s more popular tracks.
