At a little under a ton, this featherweight Honda CRX still accelerates briskly thanks to its lightly-tuned B16 VTEC, which provides somewhere in the vicinity of 220 horsepower. It’s a well-proven platform that owner Rudolf Windbacher has been refining over the years—the graceful, nimble way it carves corners is the result of lots of trial and error.

The powerplant is well-harnessed; its VTEC optimized with short gearing and enough torque from the 1.6-liter to stay howling all the time. Traction is predictably stupendous, this being an FF car, after all, and the low speed cornering impressive thanks to the CRX’s trim frame. It turns in incisively, often lifting an inside rear tire to trace a tighter line, and puts that power down smoothly and without any wheelspin or understeer. Essentially, it has everything the hillclimb’s slow hairpins demand.

Despite running just a modest front splitter, the CRX seems to improve at speed; turning in crisply and changing direction without hesitation. Some of that could be attributed to the short wheelbase, but it’s just as likely Windbacher has the setup and the aero balance just right. At times, he ran the car without a rear wing entirely—he’s tweaked the setup over the years to suit his smooth style.

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Since 2010, he’s campaigned this car and added choice pieces, notably a couple of rear wings, wider fenders, wider wheels, and different front bumpers/splitters. Whatever the combination, it’s worked well and made him a crowd favorite. However, it seems he’s set his sights higher—he just picked up an S2000″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen> .

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