In the rolling hills north of Los Angeles, next door to a movie lot, Honda’s American motorsport division HPD has produced some of the most potent engines in US motorsport; powerplants that have claimed 18 IndyCar championships and 15 Indianapolis 500 wins, along with a surfeit of sportscar titles and a trio of overall Daytona 24 Hours victories for its luxury Acura marque.
But Honda is a Japanese company, right? Parent company Honda Motor Co is the multinational conglomerate based out of Tokyo, but the American Honda Motor Company, founded in 1959, has grown into a massive concern in its own right – not bad from an initial staff of three with a start-up budget of just $250,000 to sell motorbikes! Based out of Torrance, a few miles south of Honda Performance Development’s 123,000-square-foot facility in Santa Clarita, it began building road cars in the US in the 1980s. It is now one of the top-selling automotive OEMs in a humongous market.
Honda began its US motorsport operations in 1993, joining the CART Indycar series as an engine builder (with support from Ilmor) in 1994, and then became a bedrock supplier for the Indy Racing
