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REVIEW BY FAST FOURS
ISSUE: May 2007
THE GIST: This is a stand out title and definitely one for your collection. Keiichi 'Dori Dori' Tsuchiya reckons Yanks 'can only race in a straight line' (drag-race) and then ends up awarding their tuner cars perfect scores.
BEST BITS: When gun steerer Manabu Orido (GT500 racer/ex Touge racer) goes quiet and stops commenting while the Hot Version cameras are rolling, you know it's because he's going 10-10ths. In American Touge, both he and Tsuchiya-san end up shutting up; in Tsuchiya's case, he, especially, has to eat humble pie, conceding of the Comptech-tuned supercharged Honda NSX: "If they sold this in Japan I'd buy it!" And while he's belting around the Willow Springs California track, Orido reverts to even rarer left-foot braking, such is the level of entrants' cars' performance. Tell me how often you've seen him do that back in homeland Japan?
So what's so special? Try a Honda S2000 (F20C-engined) white/carbon AE86 Hachi-roku producing 260 horsepower and evoking gasps of driver delight; a yellow Hasport EP3 Civic with a supercharged Honda CRV (K24A) four pot making 259 horses; and an unassuming-looking EG6 Civic you'll likely not forget.
That's 'cause it wasn't even entered into American Touge and belongs to a JGTC-loving spectator who drove 35 hours from Chicago to Cali just to meet and watch the Hot Version video in action. But it's no ordinary EG: Prepared by a tuning garage known as Top Setup, it's got a worked K20A DC5 Integra Type-R engine in it making 220 horsepower and run by a Hondata K-Pro ECU.
"Whoa! This engine feels like it's going to keep revving forever!" exclaims an excited and very impressed Dori Dori while fanging it around the Horse Thief Mile Course.
"This is fun!" Orido cries out in his native Japanese. "This feels like a N1 racing car but with more power."
TSUCHIYA-SAN ADDS: "These cars are a real threat to Japanese tuners."
Check out how humbled Tsuchiya is after wrestling Comptech's blown C32B engined red NSX and go wide-eyed at how competitive both he and Orido get up against each other in the Comptech S2000 vs Top Setup K20A Civic battle. Then there's how animal Manabu gets in the addictive EG Civic while out chasing Keiichi in the diabolically-good XS Engineering Impreza WRX.
This particular Hot Version DVD release is the tuning-car-porn equivalent of an unedited Paris video: attention-wrenching stuff!
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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