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Google Reader Shared Official: Japan gets Honda Civic Mugen RR - Autoblog
Designed to be perhaps the ultimate front-engined/front-wheel-drive performance car, the Mugen RR sheds an additional 10kg (22 lbs) off the standard Civic Type R’s weight, coming in at 2733 lbs. In addition to the weight loss, the freer-breathing Mugen RR picks up 15 horsepower over the regular Type R. It’s rated at 240 horses at 8,000 rpm and 160 lb-ft at 7,000 rpm.
The new Civic Si/Type R chassis are great bang-for-the-buck sporty cars. In the U.S., the Civic Si is arguably a great fun-to-drive car that won’t shatter any acceleration records, but is quite the corner carver.
But c’mon - 240HP @ 8,000 rpm and 160 lb-ft at 7,000 rpm? I assume it’s naturally aspirated and just a beefed up version of the 2.0L 197HP/139 lb-ft in the U.S.-spec Civic, so that’s a great achievement. Awesome HP/Liter and all that - but peak torque at 7,000 rpm??? Now of course peak numbers aren’t all the jazz, power under the curve is what gets you. Below is a chassis dyno graph from a Civic Si, so imagine that the power under the curve can only shift higher in the RPM range on this Mugen RR super-rally-sportage-huge-wing-bling-bling-ricearoni version.
So a reasonably flat torque curve, that’s good. What’s not good is how SMALL it is. I will end this semi-rant with a scan of a REAL torque curve. It’s not mine, but a bone stock LS2 GTO 6-speed. ‘Nuff said.
Source: Official: Japan gets Honda Civic Mugen RR - Autoblog
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:18 am
Tim,
Repeat after me…”There is no replacement for displacement”. Turbo and superchargers build displacement (in a virtual manner). You have 3 times the displacement of this little sewing machine. If you tripple it’s numbers to normalize, it bests the LS2. So, from a tunning and effeciency standpoint, arguably it’s a better motor.
Now to your point about real world performance, it is what it is. So the driver has to get the thing to 5500 run to 8000, shift and repeat. What’s the longevity of the connecting rod bolts at those speeds, sustained, day in and out during “spirited” driving? Maybe they will hold up fine. I remember seeing a graph of the MTBF of a chevy 302 (yes, 302, in a ‘69 Z28), and the time was in thousands of hours below 5K, but as you approached 7K rpm, the time dropped to hundreds of minutes. Now, the little Honda’s got a lot less mass, and metalurgy has come a long way, but I think the gist of my point remains.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Tim -
Did you happen to notice that the torque and hp curves always cross at about 5200 rpm? Do you know why?
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
Horsepower = (Torque * RPM) / 5252
Horsepower is just a function of torque, given the function it is apparent they are always equal at 5,252 RPM