Mugen is amongst the aristocracy of tuning companies.

As the brainchild of Hirotoshi Honda (Soichiro’s son), it has always had a pure bloodline of producing tuned road cars and race vehicles straight out of the Honda factory. And when Honda unveiled this Honda NSX Mugen RR concept at the 2008 Tokyo Auto Salon, anyone who loves the brand was aghast.

We’re suckers for louvres…

Just look at it. It takes all the gobsmackingly futuristic elements of Honda’s Senna-developed Ferrari slayer and just goes large.

For aero oomph is features a widened front, multi-grooved rear diffuser and an adjustable rear wing. But the power unit is where it really got interesting. It came with a modified 3.2L V6 that was mounted in the more traditional longtitudal situation, whereas the original of course had been tranversely mounted. The revert to the trad here allowed the inclusion of a more conventional and barking exhaust system, and would of course had made the weight distribution different.

and bulbous air intakes…

The donor NSX, with that long, low profile and huge rear over hang was not back happy like a 911 – rather in long, sweepy corners it drifts smoothly and controllably. We reckon the longitudal mount would make that controlled drift a little more sketchy.

On the positive side, the re-mount would have allowed for better power transfer to the rear wheels as well as that more conventionally efficient exhaust outlet.

We’d kill for a chance to test THAT particular theory.

We’re suckers for louvres…

and bulbous air intakes…

and fattened wings and red calipers and….