You won't a find a "hybrid delete" option on these Honda CR-Zs, but you will find a turbo kit. Or, rather you would, had the Honda Performance Development (HPD) engineers been ready to open the hood today at the SEMA show. The turbocharger (it's evidently located right near the firewall) and its associated plumbing are not yet ready for our eyes, we were told.
So what's the deal with these cars? Well, the HPD engineers like to go racing, and they built up the white car (the CR-Z Racer) to race at the 25 Hours of Thunderhill in Willows, California, next month. A Borg Warner dual-ball-bearing turbocharger and an all-new nickel-cobalt-magnesium battery pack help the racecar to 200 hp and 175 pound-feet of torque -- up from 122 hp and 128 lb-ft on the stock CR-Z. The red car (the Hybrid R Concept) has the same setup but is done up more like a traditional SEMA showcar, with a hood scoop and graphite-finish wheels.
HPD engineers tell us the NCM battery pack was selected for its greater energy content; it provides 25 hp -- about double what the CR-Z's stock NiMH batteries contribute. Evidently, this type of battery is also better able to support quick charge and discharge -- as you would get on a racetrack where there are rapid and frequent transitions between full throttle and full braking. Honda also swapped in a different inverter. Additional cooling was a must with the shift in focus from fuel economy to track use, so the battery pack and inverter are liquid-cooled, as opposed to air-cooled as on the stock CR-Z.
Another key change is the "on-demand" nature of the electric assist. Instead of it kicking in automatically as in normal production hybrids, the driver controls it by pressing a button on the steering wheel. It's hard to conceive of a driver ever being given that much control in a production version, but hey, it's like a sport button, no? The stock six-speed manual transmission carries over to these cars, but gets a performance clutch.
A limited-slip differential from HPD's Civic parts bin has been fitted up front, as has every bit of suspension and brake hardware. We couldn't wrest a 0-60 claim/estimate/boast, but we're told the Racer (white car) will pull 1.4g (it has 225/45R17 BF Goodrich g-force RI Track & Competition tires)
