Our 7 favorite Honda Race Car liveries
Whether it's an iconic championship winning car or a touring sedan that won the hearts of many, there's something to admire about Honda race car liveries. We've picked out a few of our favorites.
Sometimes The First IS Always The Best
Honda's Sports car racing and Formula 1 racing debut happened both in the 1960s, with the F1 program seeing more immediate success.
However, Honda's mighty S800 sports car was successful in its own right. According to TheTruthAboutCars, this S800 RSC placed 1st in class and 3rd overall at the 1968 Suzuka 12-hour race. RSC is the designation for Racing Service Center, where Honda prepped cars for the rigors of the track.
This car though has won many hearts thanks to popular scale models, and of course, inclusion in Gran Turismo.
Photo courtesy of TheTruthAboutCars
Often Replicated, but Only One Original
When it comes to livery designs, few color combos are more instantly recognizable than the pale blue and yellow from the Japanese tuning company Spoon.
Makers of all sorts of high-performance parts, Spoon uses motorsport as a test bed and promotional tool all in one.
According to S2Ki, this Spoon S2000 campaigned in endurance racing for a number of years. It raced in the ST-4 category for cars of a specific displacement, and for that reason ran an F20C.
Photo courtesy of S2Ki
The Giant Slayer
Roughly translated from Japanese, 1987 was an iconic year for Honda in FiA's Group A Racing. AutoSportWeb tells us that out of 6 races in the '87 season, the Honda Civic won all of them in class.
Satoru Nakajima was one of those drivers, and he'd go on to drive in Formula 1 a few years later. But more equally impressive is the machinery this little 1.6-liter car beat. In the rain, there is a legendary qualifying story of how the Civic was faster than a BMW 635, and an R30 Nissan Skyline. And now that livery is known to just about every Honda enthusiast.
Photo courtesy of AutoSportWeb
There's Only One
Most iconic Honda livery? It might actually be the most iconic livery of any race car.
The combination of Honda power, McLaren engineering, and Ayrton Senna's driving have made the McLaren Honda MP4/5B one of the most incredible race cars of all time.
Winning both the drivers and constructors championships in 1990, this car had a simple, yet instantly recognizable livery.
Photo courtesy of SnapLap
GT500 Monsters
The iconic GT500 category of sports car racing in Japan has launched a number of legends.
Though the cars were wildly modified compared to their street car counterparts, according to DailySportsCar, Honda homologated the NSX GT to skirt even more rules. GT500 cars weren't cookie-cutter by any means. The NSX showed up on the scene as one of the only mid-engine cars to compete, and it had amazing success.
Weirdly, the NSX competed recently as a front-engined car, and yet still complied by all of the rules. Interesting.
Photo courtesy of DailySportsCar
A Home Town Favorite
There's nothing like new regulations and an underdog story to make one car everyone's favorite. That's exactly what the Jaccs Honda Civic/Naoki Hattori car and driver combo did.
The year is 1994, and according to JapaneseRacingCars, the SuperTouring class is just starting to take over from the FIA's Group A class.
Some cars are a direct fit, while others, like this B18 Civic, were under-built for the rules. Still, driver Naoki Hattori took this car to the podium twice. In 1996, this same livery would be on an Accord and would live on in infamy.
Photo courtesy of JapaneseRacingCars
Long Live This Racecar!
For those of us in the US, it was particularly cool to see a home-grown team with a home-grown driver take an awesome car like the Acura NSX and race in the big leagues.
Speed GT series was quite a big-league series, but this specific car might be the most successful chassis in the series, running competitively on and off from 1991 to 2002. And yes, it's an early chassis to have raced in 1991. Specifically, chassis #00008.
Peter Cunningham got the driver's championship with this one in 1997.
Photo courtesy of Acura
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