Tuesday 30 August 2011

It's all about going back to the basics.

The DC2 Type R represents how cars should be made. Focused on fun, little compromise on comfort and yet well-engineered for bearable daily driving.

Carmakers can throw in wallops of horsepower, and control these power with electronics that can put NASA to shame. They can mate the engine with some fanciful gearbox that blips the throttle and does the best rev-matching that probably can only be matched by the best drivers in the world. However, at the end of all these, it just takes the fun and skills out of driving. In some cases, the immense horsepower and space-age electronics mask the inadequacies of the chassis; car buyers can perhaps ask themselves; are they really paying for more? Or they are just paying for less engineering which is covered under layers of marketing gimmicks?

The DC2 Type R has none of these. Simple naturally-aspirated power toe the line of balance, basic manual gearbox with helical LSD ensures none of the requisite skills is taken away from the driver. And that finely-tuned chassis; it's just like the girl whom we eventually want to take home as a wife; absolutely nothing to hide and springs no surprises. How many girls, or cars in this context, can fulfill a promise like that when we peel the layers off?

The DC2 Type R is still months away from the completion of the restoration project. So what exactly were Soichiro Honda-san and Shigeru Uehara-san's intentions when they conceptualised a car like the DC2 Type R? The author can't wait to find out.

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