Because the current-generation Dodge Challenger prepares to retire, Japanese coachbuilder Mitsuoka has previewed the way it might hold the large coupe alive — with a twist. It unveiled an idea known as M55 that places a Challenger-inspired physique on the current-generation Honda Civic.
Mitsuoka’s newest creation hardly comes as a shock. In spite of everything, we’re speaking about the identical of us that turned the Toyota Yaris hatchback right into a Jaguar Mark 2 look-alike and gave the Toyota RAV4 a retro-styled design impressed by Chevrolet pickups and SUVs from the Nineteen Eighties.
Developed to have a good time the model’s fifty fifth birthday, the M55 encompasses a squared-off, muscle car-like entrance finish with 4 spherical headlights, a throwback grille, and a strip of vivid trim. Seen from the facet, the M55 is clearly an evolution of the Civic. The entrance and rear doorways, the facet window, and the roof line clearly come from the Japanese firm’s perennially standard mannequin. Out again, there are louvers on the hatch’s window, a spoiler, and oval headlights surrounded by a black panel. Particular alloy wheels add a of entirety to the design.
Inside, it is largely Civic fare apart from a Mitsuoka-branded steering wheel, concept-specific trim on the dashboard, and blue upholstery with a muscle car-like stitching sample. The switches, the buttons, and the touchscreen come straight from the Honda components bin.
Energy comes from a inventory, Civic-sourced 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine. Turbocharged, it develops 180 horsepower and 177 pound-feet of torque, and it spins the entrance wheels through a six-speed guide transmission. This idea must be extra present than go, then. For context, the least highly effective variant of the 2023 Challenger packs a 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 engine rated at 303 horsepower and 268 pound-feet of torque.
Mitsuoka stresses that it constructed the M55 merely to have a good time its birthday, and it isn’t planning on turning the idea right into a manufacturing mannequin. Even when the corporate adjustments its thoughts, nothing suggests the Nineteen Sixties-inspired Civic will get clearance to show a wheel on American pavement.
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