It is by pure chance that you are seeing this feature of Kei Miura’s very own EG6 Honda Civic SiR.
I love it when a story like this just happens to materialize, it’s so ‘Japan’ with the unexpected occurring a little bit more often than most other places.
A few days after Tokyo Auto Salon 2018 ended, I was at Trust’s HQ to shoot a couple of its show cars: the soon-to-be-2,000hp Patrol, which you’ve already seen last month, and an R34 GT-R project built in collaboration with GT-R Magazine on, which you will see – hopefully – next week. Trust’s facility is pretty big, with separate buildings and garages dotted around the premises. It was in one of these that I unexpectedly found the Civic.
The car that I regretted not taking a closer look at, at the show itself, was right there in front of me. It’s likely that I would have shot it later in the year during a much overdue visit to the TRA Kyoto shop, but I was not going to pass up the opportunity to point my camera at it right there and then. The reason for it being at Trust was that the alternator had failed and Miura-san simply didn’t have the time to get it fixed before heading back home.
The story of this car starts a few days prior to the show, a typical scenario for most individuals that prepare and build cars for big events. Miura finished the morning he was supposed to drive the car into the venue, with the paint done the day prior. That’s all well and good, until you look at Google Maps and figure out that Kyoto is about a seven-hour drive from the Makuhari Messe exhibition centre in Chiba Prefecture. But Miura managed it, and got the Civic there in one piece.
Now to the car itself. I had the über-cool guys at Trust pull it out and drive it around the back of the main building, which is pretty much the same location that Sean and I teamed up at five years ago to immortalise the VR38-powered BenSopra 380SX.
The simple act of moving it entailed pulling out a massive booster as the battery had been drained, but that wasn’t really an issue. In a few minutes the car was positioned; finally I had a moment to take it all in.
This, of course, isn’t the first time I’ve seen the EG Pandem kit in all its aggressive beauty. In my JDM Hunt post from the 2017 SEMA Show, I stopped to take in the details of a beautifully built EG sporting the same aero conversion. But seeing Miura’s own car before me, it just all felt so authentic – this is his own vision for the hatchback after all.
There is talk of this car becoming the evolution of Miura’s old EF Civic, or rather the revolution. It’s still very much up in the air, but the idea is there, using the Pandem kit to boost handling thanks to a widened track, and going a little silly on the engine side of things with some forced induction.
It’s almost going against what Kanjo racers are all about, but isn’t the whole point of the aftermarket world to keep pushing the envelope? For now, the car remains very much in stock form mechanically, though. You’ll notice there’s a front-mounted intercooler hiding behind the bumper, but currently that’s just for looks – a hint for TAS show-goers that the Honda will – eventually – have some surprises up its sleeve. I really hope it materialises as it would make for a pretty epic little car.
Which brings us to the overall feel of the car, and boy does it work well. Is it the fact that the EG is a perfect candidate for an overfender transformation? Is it that Miura’s decision to do a very simple white-on-white scheme with black details as contrast the perfect execution? A bit of both really, I feel. From the wider front bumper, onto the front flares and the way the time attack-inspired front lip supports the boxed off canards – it’s a good look.
The rear is even more in-your-face, the flared fender additions cutting diagonally across the three-quarter panels before tucking up nicely around the rear bumper corners with a little finisher piece that just adds enough continuity to the conversion. Oh, and we love the pea-shooter exhaust.
What really enhances the package, however, are these, errr… what to call them? Roof spoiler extensions? Maybe rear roof canards? I’m not quite sure, but they do all sorts of nice things to the look of the car, and I love how they are more raked than the main spoiler portion itself. But there’s a reason for all of this, which I’ll get into when we look at the engine.
The testing officer at the local shaken center would probably die laughing if he saw this car rock up with the canard package it currently runs, but I doubt Miura cares. This is what he envisioned his EG Kanjo racer to look like, and it’s what he’s created. Pedestrian safety never really came into it.
Even from that first shoot I did with Miura’s 6666 Customs S13 Silvia many years ago, I’ve always loved how he integrates a NASCAR-style window net. Rather than running a Simpson one, however, he’s now making his own sporting the Pandem brand name and the ‘OK’ hand logo. This logo is a reinterpretation of the ‘Safety Drive’ logo of the Okamoto Rubber Company. Rubber as in condoms, not tires.
Swing open the driver’s door and you are welcomed by a beautifully bare cabin. There’s only one seat present, again is a Pandem item, a fitting theme seeing what the car will eventually be built to do.
Pandem branding extends to the harness as well as the door pull which is made from the same weaved nylon strap as the belts.
Seeing as the extended steering boss and the quick-release hub that’s stacked on top has relocated the Nardi wheel quite a bit further back than the factory position, the seat mount too has been set back a little to allow for an optimal driving position. Likewise, the shifter has been repositioned through a height-adjustable adaptor which looks both wonderfully complex and cool at the same time.
The gutting of the cabin must have helped shave quite a bit of weight; everything except for the dash has gone – the trim, seats, carpet and door cards.
Back in the trunk, where a spare wheel used to live, now sits a single compressor and air tank combo. These power the air cups that sit on top of the Pandem coilovers, which allow the car to be dumped to the ground, pretty much as you see it in these pictures.
This tucked look was obviously preferred to a more aggressive offset on the RAYS Volk Racing TE37Vs that the car sits on, which is almost refreshing. This may all be due to the fact that Miura is trying to get the best out of the handling, as there’s talk of him taking the Honda to Germany for a hill climb event later this year.
Now those front canards and the roof spoiler extensions begin to make sense, right?
Contrary to what other media outlets have reported, there is no turbo setup under the hood. As I mentioned, the intention is there, but there was just not enough time to sprinkle a little dose of forced induction on the VTEC unit before TAS.
If the car makes it to Germany, it will likely trade its factory-fitted B16A and 5-speed gearbox for a turbocharged 2.0L motor and Quaife sequential 6-speed transmission to help send something in the region of 400hp to the front wheels.
So that’s where we leave things with Miura’s Pandem EG for now. The next time we see it, it will hopefully be pulling massive front-wheel drive burnouts and machine-gunning through the sequential box on the streets of Kyoto. Now that would be fun.
Dino Dalle Carbonare
Instagram: speedhunters_dino
dino@speedhunters.com