The subject of the moody, nicely shot short film above looks a lot like a Renault R5 turbo, but don’t be fooled: It’s a one-of-a-kind midengine, rear-wheel drive widebody Honda Civic. And in the film -- the first in Forza’s “Along for the Ride” series -- the car’s current owner, Eric Schmidt, reunites it with its builder and original owner, Andy Barcheck.

Much has changed since Barcheck parted ways with the car: Schmidt, for one, replaced its original Acura Legend motor with a J32 snagged from an Acura CL Type S (Barcheck approves of the 100-hp boost, which hasn't upset the car's balance). Beyond that, the above video is a little light on the specifics. Forza’s John Schommer goes more in-depth about the Civic’s intent, build and evolution with Barcheck and Schmidt in a casual livestream you can view here.

Forza, of course, is primarily a driving video game series, not an online video content creator. Schommer does hint that the car could be coming to Forza at some point, which seems to us to be a totally obvious next step here, but that’s not yet confirmed.

So what do we make of all this? It’s tough to say for sure, but video games seem to be enabling a new way for us to interact with spectacularly cool builds.

Let’s say you saw the Hondura in an issue of Sport Compact Car in the mid-1990s. Odds are you’d never see the car in person, let alone drive it, unless you happened to live near Barcheck. With today's driving video games -- which even this non-gamer concedes are getting pretty damn good when it comes to detail, immersive depth and overall realism -- you can take it for a virtual spin in a digital automotive paradise. No speed limits, no cops and you don’t have to worry about dinging up that handmade bodywork!

Racing and driving video games have included unattainable real-life supercars and exotics almost from the very start (though today’s high-fidelity renderings put early pixelated efforts to shame). It’d be great to see the same attention lavished on rad one-off builds like the Hondura. In fact, this has already happened with Aaron Grote’s crazy bubble-topped Atomic Punk. Unless you were that car's lucky buyer when it crossed the block at Barrett-Jackson, Forza remains your best bet when it comes to experiencing it in any meaningful way.

Is “driving” the car in a video game the same as kicking the tires, sliding behind the wheel and taking the real thing for a real-life cruise? Absolutely not, but again, it’s not like you were going to be able to do that anyway. It’s hard to see how more access to unique and cool cars, even it it is virtual, is a bad thing for car culture.

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