When it comes to OEM tuners, links can be formed through businesses deals, acquaintances or the need to support a Motorsport program; Mugen on the other hand, was born through family ties. Hirotoshi Honda, son of Soichiro Honda, founder of the Honda Motor Company, formed the tuning company Mugen in 1973. His aim was to design and develop racing engines as well as to develop engines and tuning parts for Honda road cars. It’s always handy to have a partner to work with when starting out on a venture and Hirotoshi found his in Masao Kimura. With a CV stacked with experience in Honda R&D and Honda Racing Service as well as having 50 race wins for Honda under his belt he was well placed to help Hirotoshi establish the company.

Mugen launched straight into racing, developing the Honda 1200cc engine for use in the FJ1300 series. The engine won its debut race and the ball was well and truly rolling! The company was also heavily involved with both dirt and road bikes but, for now, I want to keep the focus on their four-wheeled story.
While Mugen achieved great success on the track it was still not really well known outside of the racing fraternity. Wanting to make a name for himself and Mugen, both off the track and within Honda, Hirotoshi chose Honda’s least likely performance vehicle and set about making it into a street racer! I am of course referring to the 1981 Honda City.

By modifying the internals to reduce compression, the addition an IHI RHB51 turbocharger and multipoint fuel injection the all alloy 1237cc engine was force fed boost at 12psi (which is fairly high when you compare it to something like the Metro Turbo’s 7psi!). All this aspiration gave the light weight little city car 100bhp which was more than enough when combined with very little lag. Honda was so impressed they put it into production!

The Turbo 1 ran from ‘82 to ‘84 and the Turbo 2 was built until ’86. Nick named the “Bulldog”, for obvious reasons, the “2” features wide arches, big spoilers and a full on 80’s graphic package that left you in no doubt that this little boost box meant business. Engine wise the “2” received an intercooler, revised inlet system and a bigger compressor. All this added up to another 10bhp

For more information on the City Turbo check out the Honda City 2 Fact book.

In 1986 Formula 3000 was introduced to Japan and by the following year Mugen had designed and built its own F3000 engine.

This engine was leased to 14 teams and by 1988 four of the top 5 drivers in the series were powered by Mugen. This success led Mugen into Europe and Formula one; by 1989 they developed their own 3.5 litre V8 F1 engines.

In parallel, Mugen developed and sold tuning parts, body kits and even wheels for Honda Road cars. With racing pedigree designed in, every aspiring Honda tuner wanted some of the action.

 

Check out more of these great magazine scans.

Today Mugen is still a must have brand for JDM Honda tuners and they are still working with Honda releasing tuning parts and after market specials. At this years Tokyo Auto Salon they displayed their latest NSX concept (another car they had a hand in designing from day one) proving the Mugen magic is still very much alive.

Throughout its 36 years Mugen has remained independent from Honda despite a messy Tax evasion case and Hirotoshi Honda inheriting a major share in Honda itself. From the vehicles and race victories I have only really touched on above you can see the company has really lived up to it name “Limitless”.

For more information on the History of Mugen check out this site:

http://scumotor.com.tw:8080/gemmore/Corner_Speed&F101JJTT&16

We couldn’t do a feature on Mugen and not link you to the official site could we! Check it out here:

http://www.mugen-power.com/

Posted on: February 11, 2009 03:29

Following on from our recent article on Steve Kirk's conceptual drawings in Street Machine's Motorvation series we thought we'd bring you Japan's offerings along similar lines: 'Custom Dreaming' by Crazy Masaru.

 

My inability to read Japanese puts me somewhat on the back foot here, so the information I've gleaned is purely visual from the pages of Lightning Vintage Auto magazine where there is a Custom Dreaming section in every splendid issue. Cars are seemingly always domestic in origin (Japanese, that is) and themes are often influenced by American car culture with the likes of Bonneville styled RX7s, Cobra-ised Datsun Roadsters, surf bum Hiace vans and Suzuki Fronte Gassers! 

 

Brilliant lateral thinking here with a Lil' Red Wagon inspired Honda Acty pickup - the Little Little Red Wagon. 

 

Here's that Suzuki Fronte SS (Sport Sedan) drag racer I mentioned. A picture of the front shows a gasser stance, some Cragar-esque mags and the legend 22 cu in on the fender (22 Cubic inches is 360cc for those that don't have their calculators to hand). It's the clever touches like that that make these ideas so neat. 

 

This MS72 Crown looks good given the circuit racer treatment.

 

Another fantastic concept is this Fairlady, as mentioned previously it's been Cobra-ised (or Shelby'd, perhaps?). Again, my lack of Japanese language skill holds us back, but I can clearly make out the numbers '289' amongst the text, suggesting that Masaru has a V8 in mind for this creation.

 

Further info? Despite the Crazy Masaru moniker (changed to Funky Masaru in at least one issue) the credit for illustration goes to M.Nemoto. I've yet to find anything on the 'net about the artist or the illustrations, but judging by this picture from Auto Otaku's Flickr pages there was a display of the works at the Tokyo Nostalic Car Show this year. If you know more let us know.

 

 

Posted on: July 24, 2008 02:00

Its easy to imagine that everyone loves old cars when you swim in a sea of blogs and forums devoted to them.  The reality is that more modern machinery has a much larger following.  I found this out first hand when I went to my first show of the year, JapFest at Castle Combe.

The show was vast, 2,500 cars were on show, of which only a small percentage were there to represent the more retro side of the Japanese scene.  What was there made up for what they lacked in numbers, in style and quality.  First stop was the stand of eight-six.co.uk, for a selection of Toyotas, not just AE86, but earlier Corollas and Racer86's fantastic KP30 startlet


















Moving back to the Paddock area saw a fantastic selection of traders and great line up of esoteric cars from Redline Magazine [link], including a bright pink VIP import;






It was good to see that people’s tastes in imports are moving beyond the latest hot Japanese car and onto some of the more unusual stuff.




By the time I'd worked my way through a sea of more modern Japanese machinery to Quarry I'd seen literally hundreds of cars.  Getting to the corner at Quarry I spotted an RX-4 standing out and being much photographed.






The 'flip' paint is a really unusual choice, but seemed to work very well.  It was certainly attracting a lot of attention.

I made my way into the final club area, another vast field, to go and hunt out some more cool retro machinery.  It was a treasure trove of cars, including probably the finest AE86 I saw all day.






Elsewhere in the field I found a gathering of cool Daihatsu' and standing out like a sore thumb a matt black Honda Prelude on TSW Venoms.












I ended the afternoon talking to the owners of a fantastic 240Z hillclimb car, a conversation which has lead me to sorting out the future of my particular vehicle and hopefully realising my own motorsports aims.




On top of the cars I met up with some good friends, which is what all this is about I guess, which made a good day into a great day.  I think I'll definitely be going back next year, maybe we'll see if we can get a bit more retro stuff there next year.  Bring on the J-tin army!

Posted on: May 19, 2008 04:01