Okay Honda, we get it. You’re good—very good—at designing and building rather excellent concepts. This is the latest, though it comes with a hefty caveat: It’s built for a video game. Gran Turismo, to be precise. It is in fact, the Honda Sports Vision Gran Turismo, built for Kazunori-san’s seminal driving simulator. So, while one full-scale model actually exists, you’ll only ever drive it digitally.
The theme here is ‘human-centered design’, which is quite weird for a car that no human will ever sit in, but those are but mere details when the design does indeed look fantastic. All squat, futuristic lines, like a shrunken NSX.
We’re told that in theory, the car utilizes much carbon fiber to keep the body weight down to an impossible 899kg. A full 100kg lighter than—if you cast your mind back—Lamborghini’s Sesto Elemento concept, itself deploying much CF.
Into this carbon fiber mix slots a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder turbo engine with VTEC, mounted in the middle and churning out a very healthy 404hp at 7,500rpm. No electric assistance, no hybrid stuff, just a hot 2.0-liter motor driving through an eight-speed dual clutch ‘box to, we guess, the rear wheels.
Sounds like the very best recipe for a small, punchy sports car, no? The full-scale model (a quarter scale one was built first) was also put through the wind tunnel—just like a real car, papa!—to fully hone the aero. This, says Honda, means the Sports Vision GT boasts optimum airflow around and out of the body, the underfloor and cabin/engine.
So, we get it Honda, you’re good at this. Now please make one for real.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
