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Japan Day Seven, Part Two: Twin Ring Motegi

Sep 27, 2017

We’re still at the Honda Collection Hall on the grounds of Twin Ring Motegi and now we head into the section of the building that houses some of Honda’s historical racing cars. I found this picture of the lower floor and though it would be nice to show it first.

We move into the room with all of the racing cars… I’ll be honest, some of the pictures might be a little blurry, I apparently can’t take pictures indoors and I didn’t realize some of them were blurry until I went through them. My apologies.

One of the early Honda F1 engines… I believe this was from the early 1960′s.

The injection on this thing is pretty wild. I’m not sure what the hoses are but they appear to be some sort of fuel or air lines.

A close up pictures of the air inlets. It’s neat to see this sort of stuff that was made over 50 years ago.

This is the Cooper T53 Climax. One of the first rear engine cars in F1.

I took some pictures of the large photos hanging on the walls.

I grabbed one of the documents they had when we walked in and I brought it back to America with me. I found it and then realized that the pictures on the wall were also on the handout. So I scanned it so you can read the stories behind these cars and the images.

You can see the Cooper (pictured above) int he bottom corner of the article.

Take some time to read through it… it’s pretty cool. Honda-San was a true perfectionist.

Funny to see these cars with modern batteries in them, and the bosozok-ish style exhaust.

So. Many. Exhaust. Pipes.

Another Medusa looking exhaust setup. I bet these engines sound like Jesus screaming through a megaphone.

The rear sections of these cars look so cool while also being extremely terrifying.

1968 Honda RA301

RA301′s side-rear exhaust setup. Another gnarly creation from the engineers… How could you cove this up, it looks so amazing!

No, these won’t fit on your EG. ^_^

This was one of the first cars in F1 that ran a fitted rear wing.

A rear shot of the RA301.

Want to listen to what these things sound like? No problem… just used this sound board. Yes, I listened to them and yes, they howl they put out rivals any v10-v12 in the world. Check out the bottom right  selections, you can listen Ayrton Senna’s F1 car starting up and revving. uhhhhh!

1988 Honda RA168A engine. 680bhp, over 14,000 rpm.

This thing is pretty intense looking. It’s also cool to see F1 going back to the turbo charged engines for the 2013 season.

This is a cool cut-away of an older F1 engine, not really sure which one.

Moving on to the more modern F1 cars.

One expensive line of F1 cars. I wonder how many of these have engines…

This is an early 2000′s F1 car… I think the notes say 2002.

It’s amazing to see what 40 years of innovation and technology will do. What will F1 cars look like in 2043?

This is something that was chilling to see. Ayrton Senna’s F1 cars from the early 90′s. He drove these before leaving McLaren/Honda for Williams/Renault. You can see the images of him hanging on the wall behind them. Senna was killed in 1994 after his steering column broke in his Williams/Renault FW16 and sent him crashing into a wall at 200mph.

This is one of the engines that would have been used to power Senna’s Honda/McLaren F1 car. A variant of the RA122E, this motor pumps out more then 850bhp and turns more than 15,000 rpm.

Here is a car that most of the readers are familiar with. This is a Group A spec Civic Si, 1989.

Check out the air jack nozzle!

Center lug Mugen M5 variants? Yes please! Check out the “show car” stamp on the lip of the rim.. haha

Fuel cell cover

I love the decal scene, it really looks good, even in 2013.

The famous, Beams Racing DC5 Type R… fitted with lovely Mugen parts.

Check out the fog lights mounted inside of the bumper, and the Mugen emblem painted into the grill mesh.

Still running OEM door panels!

A slightly blurry picture of the beautiful Mugen MF10s mounted on this thing. Look at the faded out logo on the Brembo caliper… likely from the crazy heat these thing saw while its days on the race track.

I debated posting this picture… I don’t want people to start drilling holes in what looks like Vision MC mirrors because they saw it on this actual DC5 race car. In all seriousness, I wasn’t sure what this was for… but if you pay close attention to the picture below, you’ll see that there are lights in these holes. I’m not sure what they are for, but I imagine it has to be something to do with visibility for night racing.

Mugen side skirts, wheels, and rear wing… all in lovely, functional racing fashion.

Can you spot the fuel door filler cap?

Air jack nozzle cleverly located through the reverse light.

Race car exhaust and you can see part of the rear air jack.

I need this in my office! Notice the green lights in the driver mirror.

This was one of the more extremely modified race cars in the building. The fact that it’s an Accord makes it even cooler.

Air ducts coming into the cabin to cool the driver. Also, notice the crazy tint on the windshield. It covers nearly the entire glass.

The car was sectioned off, and you couldn’t get any closer than the first shot. This car was way too cool to just look at from 10ft away, so I stepped over the barrier and had to snap some pics of the inside. Check out the patches stuck to the dash and all of the weird knobs and levers on the center tunnel… which is made from carbon… lol

This thing was just awesome looking.

This Raybrig NSX wasn’t too bad either.

Mmmm.

A small section for the Indy series cars.

Honda’s Indy V8 motor. I saw one of these at the Peterson Automotive Museum in California a couple of years ago.

The other one I saw looked… just like this one.

Another picture hanging on the wall in the Indy section.

Ruben Barrichello’s 2007 Honda EarthDreams F1 car. The livery on this car was awesome… look below.

I’m not sure who all of these people are, but it could be people involved in the F1 program perhaps?

Check out all of the carbon fiber, and the thin, flat braces that connect to the suspension. They have come a long way since the 1960′s.

Carbon fiber everywhere…

Looking out of the window, you can see the circuit beyond the tree line.

We were done with the racing cars, and the next room over houses all of their racing motorcycles. Since Honda started building bicycles, scooters and motorcycles before cars, it was only fitting to take a walk through this section before moving on. I’m not a huge motorcycle person, I don’t know much about them and have very little interest in them so my coverage of this will be sparse.

Race bikes for days in this place.

Not only are there hundreds of Honda motorcycles in here, there is also a vast collection of other manufacturers. I guess any bikes that they deem significant they just get and put them up here. This is an old Harley Davidson.

MV Agusta

Maserati

We head to the next level to check out some serious MotoGP bikes, and then make our way into the Honda passenger car section.

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As always, thanks for reading and check back next week!

David

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