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 referred to as M55 that places a Challenger-inspired physique on the current-generation Honda Civic.
Mitsuoka’s newest creation hardly comes as a shock. In any case, we’re speaking about the identical people 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 Eighties.
Developed to rejoice the model’s fifty fifth birthday, the M55 includes a squared-off, muscle car-like entrance finish with 4 spherical headlights, a throwback grille, and a strip of vivid trim. Considered from the aspect, the M55 is clearly an evolution of the Civic. The entrance and rear doorways, the aspect window, and the roof line clearly come from the Japanese firm’s perennially fashionable 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 principally 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 elements 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 by way of a six-speed handbook transmission. This idea ought to 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 rejoice its birthday, and it is not planning on turning the idea right into a manufacturing mannequin. Even when the corporate modifications its thoughts, nothing suggests the Nineteen Sixties-inspired Civic will get clearance to show a wheel on American pavement.
Associated Video
