I can confirm Honda has a skunkworks going on. I went to the one in Canada, I can even give directions to people if your so inclined(its behind this ice cream company lol)

They had nothing as extreme as what this dude claims, but they have JDM cars such as the Beat, SMX, etc. mostly K-Cars

However, they were messing around with engine swaps(B18 in Civic, B16 in Civic CX, H22A in Civic) etc. Sure it sounds tame now, but this was cool stuff for 1996 or so.