Radical New Honda CR

The Honda CR-V is about as normal a vehicle that anyone can imagine. It's a small crossover that offers all-wheel drive, a couple of four-cylinder engine options and a hybrid. Honda has sold millions of them. It sold 361,000 in 2021 and is on pace to break its record in 2023. The Honda CR-V Hybrid Racer, introduced earlier this year at the season-opening IndyCar race in Florida, is not the same vehicle.

It kinda looks like a CR-V if you squint. It has the new front end, captured on the redesign of the passenger car in 2022. The rear bodywork is actually the same. However, the rest of the prototype, rolling lab race car, is nothing like your granny's crossover.

For starters, it has an IndyCar engine, at least, a variation of the 2.2-liter, twin-turbo six-cylinder hybrid powerplant that will be in next year's race cars. That means around 800 horsepower, fed to the rear wheels only, under the tube-frame, race car-like chassis with a back end that opens like a clamshell. The hood is lightweight and removable, hiding an Acura NSX GT3 race car front suspension. The rear suspension is from a different Honda race car.

The Honda CR-V Hybrid Racer is what happens when you let engineers loose to create without rules or restrictions.

"David Salters, Honda Performance Development (HPD) president, he likes to have crazy dreams. And so he said 'why don't we put together an IndyCar engine with a hybrid system? And we'll kind of come up with this concept so they can use it to promote both IndyCar and the CR-V,'" vice president of HPD Kelvin Fu told Newsweek.

"It's kind of a Frankenstein that kind of sits between the two of them. So we designed a custom tube frame chassis. We have the IndyCar engine in the back, but we also have this kind of unique hybrid system that was designed at HPD. It features supercapacitors that store energy and an Empel electric motor. So you'll start off on electric power and then it will fire up the engine. It's incredibly violent when that happens, so make sure you have your earplugs in," he said.

And violent it was. The Hybrid Racer clanks and clunks as it waddles from a standstill on electric power, onto the 1.5-mile racetrack at M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan, about 15 miles from the IndyCar race in downtown Detroit. Most race cars clunk and clang, but it will be covered by engine noise. Once on the track, the CR-V hybrid race engine fires up like an explosion, complete with smoky smells and vibrations all over the vehicle.

Acceleration could be described as brutal, with facial skin (and internal organs) sliding rearward every time project lead and HPD factory driver James Nazarian punched the accelerator pedal. The massive brakes did the reverse, sending eyeball fluid (and internal organs) forward into the six-point racing harness and hard-shelled seat bolted onto the passenger side.

Even with plugs the CR-V colloquially known as The Beast, was earsplitting, only quieting down as Nazarian entered the few tighter corners on the course. It's also hot. Unlike the street Honda CR-V, the Hybrid Racer does not have air conditioning. After two laps in full race gear including helmets, gloves and fireproof suits, it was sweaty enough in the cabin to take a break.

"We designed the frame and provided the powertrain, then we went to our racing team in (Marysville) Ohio. We started dropping stuff off there and they started putting it all together. So this is like a combination of all the racing that that Honda Performance Development does," said Fu.

Honda will continue to use this CR-V Hybrid Racer rolling lab for experiments, including ones on the 100 percent renewable fuel it is using from Shell. This is how it improves both its racing and consumer cars.

"The same people we have doing ARX-06 GTP race car, which is a hybrid as well, took some of that learning and put it in the CR-V, and then some of that goes over to IndyCar. So it's a nice way that we can just experiment and have fun," David Salters, president of HPD told Newsweek.