Although you may not recognize it now, odds are you've seen this RSX Type-S before. It arrived in the first batch delivered to this country with a single-digit VIN number. Since then it's been painted three times and seen action on every front of the tuner-marketing scene. Most recently it reset the record as the fastest RSX to lap Buttonwillow Raceway's full course. But getting there wasn't easy, or direct.
Acura brought the car in as part of its press fleet in 2001. As you can imagine, press cars live a pretty hard life. Journalists tend to wring the snot out of them with acceleration, braking, and taco eating on the go tests. The bright silver car did its duty though, posing for photos and introducing North America to the brilliant K-series engine and its horrid cable linkage shifter. While the abuse inflicted by the hands of cruel editors may have seemed harsh, it was nothing compared to the damage it was about to incur as it entered the world of motorsports.
Instead of being crushed with the rest of the fleet, the car was handed over to RJ deVera. For those who don't know him, deVera has been involved in dozens of SEMA car projects as well as hosting a tuner show on MTV and having a cameo in the original The Fast and the Furious. His notoriety in the car show scene has overshadowed his racing projects, but behind the scenes deVera has dabbled in everything from drifting to road racing. The RSX seen here was never intended to go to car shows, but strangely it was never meant to race either.
Upon receiving it, deVera had the car slathered in Bondo and mold release agent. From there, molds were built and two complete carbon-fiber RSX bodies were created. It was all part of an ill-fated drag-racing program. A monster turbocharged K20 engine was built by AEBS in San Diego with a target goal of 1,100 bhp. But, aside from a couple of photo shoots, the program never really got off the ground. One complete car eventually went to Jojo Callos and the other body was later sold to Jeremy Lookofsky, who mated it to Shaun Carlson's tubeframe Neon chassis and shipped it to Hawaii. The original car was a mess, and by all means it probably should've been destroyed at that point, but deVera got it in his head that he wanted to build a Honda Challenge car out of it.
He brought it out to a NASA event at California Speedway in the summer of 2003. This was the first time I met him and his crazy race car. The car had his own RO_JA brand body kit and wheels, it was painted in a slightly darker shade of silver with blue Honda wings, and there was a Comptech custom racing exhaust, header, antiroll bars, and strut bars. The interior was thoroughly tricked out with a custom chromoly rollcage and fancy tinwork. Most impressive though were the Pepsi, Valvoline, and other logos that were on the Charge Speed carbon-fiber hood. He even had little matchbox-sized replicas.
He was racing with a provisional license and was slow as hell. But the car was beautiful and there were two magazines and a camera crew documenting his every move. This amounted to more exposure than the series had ever received up to that point. As a competitor who lived for the Honda Challenge series at the time, I wanted him to stick around.
I tried to give him advice on driving but like any rookie he blamed the car. It wasn't until I got behind the wheel a few months later that I realized just how bad it was. Highly adjustable suspension components are great, but in the wrong hands they can be scary. The shop that installed the Zeal Function V-6 coilovers raised the dampers up out of their saddles and then dropped the spring perches down on them. This pretty much completely closed the dampers at their static ride height so that any cornering load would bounce the car off of its bump stops. I should have checked this before going out on the track but instead I found out the hard way by exiting the track sideways off Buttonwillow's fastest turn.