A $150,000 Honda Civic Visiting Spoon, Japan's Ultimate Honda Builder

I just went in there, and Hector is going to be running three Honda Civics with Spoon engines. What's up guys, Larry Chen here. We are in Japan. Our friends from Yokohama Tire and KW Suspension invited us out to Japan to cover car culture. We are at Type 1 slash Spoon right now in Tokyo. We're going to take you guys along for a little tour. We've had a chance to already walk around, and I spent maybe an hour just non-stop shooting, just laying on that shutter, just machine gunning all these cars that are just sitting still. This is such a dream of mine to come here. I love Spoon. I love the aesthetic. I love that they're just so much about balance and performance over just everything else. It's so cool to be here, but look at this scene. It's just, I say it a lot, but it really is unbelievable. I mean, I'm just so happy that something like this exists. Behind me, that's the engine room. You got an NSX-R here, of course. Crazy S2000. Just so many cool builds. Actually, but the thing is, I actually wanted to feature this. This is the Build by Legends Honda Civic EG. This is going to be a really, really, really special car. So yeah, we had a chance to shoot in and around a little bit, just of everything. The main thing we're actually here for is because KW is starting to build some suspension for Spoon. Well, in partnership with Spoon. So let's check this out here. You can see that they're on this Civic Type R here. It's a pretty sick setup. Look at that. You guys know Keiichi Tsuchiya, the Drift King. He's actually had a chance to drive this, and he pretty much said, this is the best front-wheel drive car that he's ever driven in terms of handling. So definitely, I'll take his word for it. This thing is so cool. I'd love to drive this, but unfortunately, it's up on the rack here. But you can actually see the shock right here. You can see the coil over here. How cool is that? They got the whole showroom set up here for us. They let us take their little car elevator, which is really cool. This place is just so legendary. All right, so we are at this amazing build here. We're checking out this EG Civic, which potentially will be the most expensive EG hatch in the world. The concept behind it is something else. It's basically like a singer-type build, I guess. But the point is they want to give the public a chance to own a car built by the legends. For example, like Spoon. I got my really good friend here, Daijiro Yoshihara. I've known this guy for, well, almost 15 years, maybe more. Yeah, more, maybe. All right, and I got the one, the only... He's a Japanese singer. Can you introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about the company? Okay, so my name is Katsu Takahashi. I'm with Built by Legends. And we're trying to make the ultimate Civic with Spoon. And the concept is basically tuner, icon, reboring kind of thing. So it's going to be like the ultimate 90s JDM racer mod. And that's properly done and built by the legends. And then every nut and bolt, it's going to be basically a brand new car. Yes, yes. Let's go around here. I've seen a couple of little things already, but of course the centerpiece is the engine bay. This header is so crazy. Tell me a little bit about this header. So this is a custom titanium header, which is inspired by the JTTC racing car back in the 90s. So it goes up and then goes down. This is for the engine to sit low, low up. And yeah, I mean, it's, as you can see, it's really crazy. Oh, and another thing I noticed here, carbon shock towers. So what's going on here? So the carbon infusion has been done by Opera Performance. And obviously it's laminated and vacuumed. So it's one piece. So it's going to be really rigid. You don't need to put towers, strut tower, because that would only add weight. So yeah, I mean, please look at the interior. Yeah. Because the point of this is it's a street car, right? Yes. And you don't want to put a roll cage in here because it pretty much diminishes the fact that it's a street car, the ultimate street civic. And a lot of the things about Spoon, you know, while they're really big into building race cars, they also love to build balanced street cars. And that's kind of the thing is it's a usable thing. Like this is something that I would definitely appreciate. But the fact this is all carbon, like the floor is all carbon. And the firewall as well. And the firewall. So the crazy thing is all of this will be covered up, but I guess it doesn't matter. Well, we're going to show a little bit of carbon because I want people to, you know, appreciate it. But yeah, we're going to put carpets. I think this is one of a good chance to see the whole carbon layer right now. So that's one of the reasons we decided to show the build in progress car here in Spoon. I mean, because this is not the only thing that you're going to build. You're actually going to get minds to build R32 GTR their way. So potentially that's the thing is we've watched so many best motoring videos, Option, all of that. And, you know, we're just so jealous of you guys to be able to get all of these awesome cars. Really legends. And to have the chance to own one that's brand new is really, really groundbreaking. So the actual engine is... It's a B18C Spoon engine. It's an actual Spoon engine. Of course, yes. Of course, it's going to be built. I mean, it's built like this. Right. Oh, it's actually going to be built from this engine room here. So how much power do you think it's going to put out? You know, it's a street car, so it's going to be about 200, maybe. But in this lightweight chassis, it's got to be unbelievable to drive. So you actually do a lot of time attack with Spoon. And you've actually raced a 25 hour race with them too, right? Yeah, so I've had a chance to follow Dai on his mini adventures, driving Spoon race cars, time attack cars, and also endurance cars. But actually, the first time I ever met you was when you were driving a DCE2. That's right, at the balcony. Yeah, yeah. I remember that too. That was the first time ever I met Dai. Cut to pictures of him looking very, very young. But that was a lot of fun, I know. Can you believe that? Yeah. All those years ago. Yeah. That was the first time I drove one of the Spoon cars. Yeah, yeah. So first time I met Katsu was at the Gumball 3000. And he was driving the sport vehicle. And I had a chance to drive a really nice Lexus LC500. And we called it the JDM Gumball Cruise Control. Because you could flat foot to the floor. And it wouldn't let you go over 115 miles per hour. All JDM cars are limited to that. So, yeah, we were at 115 most of the time. Yeah, that was the best Gumball, in my opinion, I think. Which, by the way, it was amazing because the Gumball organization, I think, bought out the entire country of Albania for us to drive no speed limits all the way through Albania. So, yeah, it's crazy. 115? 115. It wasn't legal for you guys. It's what we were limited to. But other people were going 200 miles per hour plus. And that was legal at the time. Yes, because they had about 2,000 police officers blocking off the roads for us. That's dope. I guess I missed that one. Wow, I just love this kind of build. So here's the thing. You guys are going to be finished pretty soon. And you're going to bring this to the U.S. And then we're going to be able to do a full feature on it, right? So they're going to let me drive it. Let me drive it, please. And Dai's going to drive it, too. Let's drive together. I don't even have to scumbag them into letting me drive it. They're already offering. And I cannot wait to drive the Minds R32 GTR also. Yeah, that's going to be epic. So definitely follow them on Instagram, Built by Legends, right? Just so cool. So cool. Thank you guys so much for having us. The fact that in 2020 you can buy a brand new Civic EG hatch. Depending on options, this thing is going to cost $120,000 USD. I think it'll be worth it for the ultimate JDM fanboy spoon. A real spoon Honda Civic that's brand new with zero miles. I think it's totally worth it. It's just so cool. Thank you guys for tuning in as always. And thank you to my sponsors, KW Suspension and Yokohama Tire. These guys really are big believers in Hoonigan Autofocus. And we get to show you guys this footage. And we get to feature these awesome cars because of them. So definitely support our sponsors. That's a wrap. We're going to keep shooting and we're going to keep pushing to show you guys some more Japanese car culture. That's a wrap.