Your favorite car company might have faster cars than Honda but do they make jets? And more importantly, do they have a skunkworks team to make their jets even faster?
Honda is known for making some of its most mundane models like the Civic and Acura TLX and making factory tuner specials out of them like the Honda Civic Type R and Acura TLX Type S. But did you know they also low key tune their one and only jet? As per Honda in an official press release they dropped earlier this week (Oct. 16,2018) they announced a special performance package for the HondaJet HA-420. More importantly, Honda revealed that they’ve got a special skunkworks team whose sole purpose is to tweak the HondaJet for more performance, so ya, Honda is totally tuning jets.
Honda’s Advanced Performance Modification Group, APMG for short, has been working on a performance package for this small passenger jet to keep this jet competitive, up to date, and to offer value to its clients. Just like their motor sports division is tapped to develop an aero package complete with front, side, and rear splitters, APMG came up with aero improvements for the HA-420.
Flight Global reports that Honda worked creating an extension of sorts on the span of the horizontal tailplane. APMG also removed wing fences and vortex generators, both which interrupt the airflow flowing over the jet’s wings.
Just these small adjustments enable the Honda Jet to carry 100 more pounds of takeoff weight, allows for takeoffs from shorter runways by a whopping 443 feet, and adds an extra 100-120 nautical miles of range (a big difference for small passenger jets.)
Although their press release doesn’t outright say this, I bet these aerodynamic improvements make the HondaJet that much faster in the air.
HondaJet’s with the performance package also get a software upgrade for their navigation system.
This upgrade costs $250,000 and can be applied to older HondaJets as well. If that price seems a bit steep, keep in mind that a new HondaJet costs $4.5 Million, so we’re on a whole different playing field here.
