When most Americans think of Honda
, they think of economical cars of modest quality. After all, the Tokyo-based carmaker recently dominated KBB's brand image awards. However, Tatsuru Ichishima looked at Honda a little differently. He founded a company called Spoon Sports to turn regular ol' Hondas into legit speed demons. Have you ever noticed that gearheads love to deck out Honda Civics? That is in large part due to Spoon Sports. While turning Civics into speed demons may raise their car insurance rates
, they are still incredibly fun to drive. Honda never intended to build race performance vehicles, but that changed with the founding of Spoon Sports. What is Spoon Sports?
Ichishima was originally a test driver with Honda. At that time, Honda was mainly known for building quality economic cars and stayed far away from the racing world. However, Ichishima noticed that Honda vehicles were built on quality chassis that were well balanced. He realized that with some serious alterations under the hood, Honda's could be altered into racetrack-quality vehicles.
With Honda's blessing, he left the company to found Spoon Sports in 1988. Spoon Sports would be partially funded by Honda with one goal in mind: to make Honda's go really, really, fast.
Spoon Sports was born with a souped-up a hatchback
Shockingly, the first altered Honda from Spoon Sports would be a 1985 Civic E-AT. This was a very boxy hatchback that doesn't exactly scream racetrack competitor. However, Ichishima knew exactly what he was doing.
Virtually everything under the hood was completely removed and replaced with light high-performance parts. Most notably was the new naturally aspirated 1.6-liter DOHC engine that could produce 230 hp. The engine came with a custom valve cover and header with spring flange joints.
But the real claim to fame of the Spoon Sports Civic E-AT was how light it was after alterations. Ichishima and team were able to get it below 2,000 pounds, as documented by HotCars
. This was quite impressive by 1980s standards, given that carbon fiber and titanium weren't highly used like they are today. This souped-up E-AT would be painted in blue and yellow, a color scheme still used by Spoon Sports today. MORE: The Honda S800: An Affordable Classic
Custom Honda S2000
The rest, as they say, is history. The customizations by Spoon Sports became so impressive that it altered the corporate strategy of Honda. While the carmaker is still primarily known for quality econ cars, they wanted to make some sporty stock cars so Spoon Sports had a more powerful base car to work with.
A notable example is the Honda S2000, which was in production from 1999 to 2006. You could say that the S2000 was Honda's attempt to compete with the popular BMW Z3, but that didn't matter to Spoon Sports.
Spoon Sports took the S2000 and did some very impressive modifications with this already amazing vehicle. Some customizations were for racetrack performance, and others were for high-profile clients who needed something that is still street legal. In any case, Spoon Sports used the release of the S2000 to expand into the American market.
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