Originally Posted by PikkaGTR
yeah true true
i guess if they do import the DC5 R they'll proly have to drop the type S line up as well
maybe that's why no CTR neither
o well one can dream....
The issue's not very clear cut.
For about three years, Honda NA has had permission to market a car in the USDM that might appear to compete with the Acura RSX Type S, so everyone felt that the EP3 CTR was on the way.
However, the issue got complicated very quickly because the USDM EP3 Si is the one of the least popular Hondas ever, and some people are not convinced that giving it more HP is the answer.
They're stickering a $16,000 good buy at $20,000, which makes it a bad buy and makes it much harder to fit the CTR into the marketing plan. Evidently they couldn't suck it up and admit the EP3 Si should've just cost a little less.
A huge marketing problem in the enthusiasts market right now is the fact that people are dropping the DC5 and EP3 lines in favour of other lines for their racing projects.
I don't know whether you noticed, but one of the Real Time Racing DC5 cars ended up on eBay (!!) just the other day, and bit names like Real Time, Spoon Sports and many others are beginning to field CL7 sedans (K motors and double wishbones) in place of the EP3 and DC5 (K motors saddled with McPherson struts).
A McPherson strut FF car allows you to redesign the crush zones for better safety, allows you to build the car more easily and more cheaply. But replacement suspensions will be more expensive for the end user, and the basic suspension design is a poor one for racing (for an FF car). It will work for Porsches, but not Hondas.
I think that the last straw was when Ichisima went public with a statement that the DC5 and EP3 were hopeless as racing vehicles, and referred to them as a reworked van chassis.