In the world of Honda tuning, Spoon Sports has earned a reputation for offering the highest form of service and products. Not an easy thing since Honda already builds its engines to very high standards. Think of the B18 or K20 units from Civic and Integra Type Rs and the FC20/22 from the S2000 that push out well over 100 hp per liter. How can you possibly improve on this without compromising longevity and usability?
We've all heard stories of people bolting on pod filters and large bore exhausts to their Integras and S2000s in the pursuit of power gains when, in actual fact, they were achieving the exact opposite. You certainly can't disrupt the fine-tuning and precise balance between intake and exhaust on high-compression naturally aspirated engines. It's precisely this way of thinking that has pushed Spoon to further fine-tune these powerplants, rather than "disturb" their natural balance.
As soon as we heard that Spoon and Type One had just finished putting together its latest demo car we headed straight to their workshop in Tokyo. We were greeted by Mr. Ichishima who immediately got down to business by taking us to a few floors of Spoon's headquarters where the engine building area is located. We were allowed to snap away and follow the build process of an FC20 motor, which was being carefully assembled by Naoki Yoshida, the head of the engineering department. Yoshida showed us a few interesting parts like F20C and K20 dry-sump kits, prototype exhaust manifolds, finely polished heads and talked us through some of the parts and work Spoon does. We were shown where the Spoon suspension kits are assembled and how the fine attention to detail that the company is known for even extends to the careful matching of springs according to their weight so that a full four-damper kit offers the best performance and feel when used on a customer's car. You will only find this kind of attention to detail on race cars.
