History is littered with tales of epic, mis-matched David- and-Goliath-scale match-ups: The Bride vs. the Crazy 88; Bruce Lee vs. Kareem; Rocky vs. Apollo Creed (twice), Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, Tommy Gunn, Mason Dixon and finally the Grim Reaper, all in a mixed martial arts cage match.
There is an even greater against-the-odds battle brewing, and I'm not talking about Ralphie Parker vs. Scut Farkas (although it's a close second). No, I'm talking about the good old-fashioned struggle between all-motor and turbo. The supercharger set may try to get into this action but that's like the 3000GT trying to muscle in among the Supra, 300ZX, and RX-7 for '80s super GT supremacy; it just doesn't work. But if you thrive on this kind of carnage, our boy Drew breaks it all down elsewhere in this issue (no word yet on a PPV special).
For this fight, we assembled two evenly-matched EK hatches. Both come with enough JDM flava to make even Jonny Jade-D M give them a five-star Yelp rating. Both are enriched with a cool, refreshing shot of vitamin K (not to be confused with special K) also known as the K series engine found in the new Si, RSX, and TSX (and now these two EKs!).
We wanted to run a gamut of performance tests to measure everything from chassis and engine dynos (parasitic loss is for pussies) to quarter-mile and circuit lap times. But you know what they say about the best laid plans... uh, we don't either. We're not too bright, so we couldn't conduct such extensive exams. It's also futile to pit a 289hp engine against one with potentially twice the amount of power in any sort of evaluation. Instead, in our own half-assed manner we snapped pictures and interviewed each owner for their specs. We present these hot hatches as fine examples of naturally-aspirated and turbocharged Hondas. You be the judge, is NA best or is boost better?
NA Is Best
This is the third time we've featured one of Leonard Yee's cars in a mnage a trois of photo shoots (and he didn't even have to pay double for that sort of action). His '00 Si ran in our February '04 issue and this very same EK ran on our cover way back in September of '05. What's that, you say? You don't remember this Kandy Pink K'd EK? Of course not, silly! It was blue at the time with a completely different, naturally-aspirated GSR motor. So, why the extreme makeover, Leonard?
"For the September 05 issue, I had no clue about my car being cover material, and I think a lot of people questioned the decision," Leonard explains (blame Nads- SS staff). So with this car, I wanted to shut all the haters up and build something they would never come close to building. I wanted to raise the bar, so I dug really deep into my pockets for every last penny I had, and came up with this as a result. It started off with an invitation from Honda America to be at their SEMA booth. I knew the car [in its previous condition] would be sufficient, but I wanted to shock everyone, since not many ordinary tuners like me can make it there."
Boost Is Better
Jason Whitfield is an OG tuner of the highest order. His first "import car" as he calls it was a '90 Integra that he street-raced (before anyone knew what was up) with a shot of nitrous. "After that, I wanted to get something that was smaller and lighter, which of course was the '92 Civic hatch," said Jason. "Shaun Carlson and I decided the NOS was not enough, so we turbocharged the Civic and found out why boost is better. The single cam DX Civic was, by far, way more fun to drive than any of our cars to date. That car was publicized and covered in Turbo as "The World's Fastest Single Cam," until it was crashed by a friend. To finish the build and article, we swapped that engine and turbo setup into my daily-driven CRX. That car was so beat up, Shaun and I wanted to go over it all before the final cover feature, so we used the crazy painted green CRX."
The CRX was the stuff of legend and Jason, a hardcore Honda head, continued to churn out the funkdoobiest H- and A-cars from his low profile Rage Performance (ne Whitfield Racing) until the General came knocking at his door.
"GM called on us to do what we do and build a crazy-looking, real world street racecar that could win at HIN (where we earned 1st place three times), qualify for a major drag race event like NHRA or IDRC (where we won the first 3 events we attended in '06) and look good doing it." But Jason will never stray far from his roots.
"I'll build Honda and Acura cars for customers, as well as myself, until the day I decide to close my doors," Jason stated. "I've read on alot of online forums and web sites about what people think of my relationship with GM; it's less then nice. So just to prove these kids wrong, I plan to put out a few more Hondas this season to showcase my abilities."