This Suzuki Swift race car called “TRB-04” was built by HKS Power to break the FWD Tsukuba track record. The project started with a fourth generation Swift Sport they completely stripped and rebuilt with a lot of carbon fiber resulting in a 930 kg (2050 lb) vehicle. They also moved the driver’s seat to the middle of the cabin. Under the carbon fiber hood sits a turbocharged 4G63 (MIVEC) inline-four and HKS GTIII turbocharger. The engine’s 500 ps (492 hp) is sent to the front slicks through a sequential transmission. The hard work paid off as the team broke the record several times with their current best being 55.498 seconds on January 31. You can view more photos of the build at HKS’ project page.
Source: HKS Power (project page) and HKS Co FB page
Did y’all mean to put 930 ‘kg’?
Yes we did. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.
Great feature and pictures, HKS are legendary! The fwd Tsukuba record has since been beaten by 2 cars! The jdmyard civic from Australia and the pztuning civic from Canada (if memory serves). I think they broke into the 54 and 53 second range respectively. Keep up the good work!
Hi Moe. Thanks for sharing that and your support. I found a Speedhunters’ article stating JDMyard went 54.901 and Vibrant went 53.071. http://www.speedhunters.com/2019/02/attack-tsukuba-2019/