Hondas are front-wheel drive. That’s just a fact. You can claim that the company has built some incredible rear-wheel drive cars in the past, like the S2000 or NSX, but they’re simply the exceptions proving the rule. There was never a rear-driven Civic, and there never will be. Anyone who says anything else is fooling themselves. God is crying.
The folks at Throtl have built a drift car out of their EK-generation Honda Civic, shaping the image of the car around the factory Civic Type R. It’s a front-engine rear-drive EK, so they’re calling the car F R E K. Okay, that’s creative. They won’t win me over, because this car was supposed to be front-wheel drive and should always be front-wheel drive.
Larry Chen recently met up with the folks who built this car and got them to talk about the build process and what it took to get this abomination on the track. The chassis was never meant to handle a rear-wheel drive differential, and it seriously broke the first time they launched the car. The Throtl guys basically had to fabricate an entirely new subframe with a number of braces on it to keep the S2000 ‘pumpkin’ attached to the car.
If the team who built this car had instead put the same 550 horsepower turbo K20 engine in an S2000, would it not be a much better full package? Is there anything that inherently makes a RWD Civic cooler than a two-seat roadster for trackdays and drifting? Maybe it wouldn’t get clicks on the internet, which is ostensibly what the car was built for.
I don’t think I’d be interested in owning or driving a car like this, but I’m glad that the car community is diverse enough to incorporate weird and wild builds like this one. This seems like a really well done track car, and it’s probably quite fast. I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right to me. Luckily my opinion doesn’t affect anyone else’s car choices. If they enjoy it and it makes them happy, there’s no reason to prevent this car I have personal feelings about from existing.
If you want to see more about this car, check out the many videos on the build from Throtl.