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The Willys Wheeler is a 'copy' of a Japanese speciality, the Honda City Turbo I. Not very well known outside Japan, the City is hard to find facts about. Below is what I have found. The first picture is from the Willy's Wheeler manual, showing the number 1 Honda City Turbo I, race prepped, and then caller 'Ir'. The race version was built for a promotion woman's series of racing, running as a warm up race before bigger races. The standard Turbo 1 produces 100hp and has a top speed of 179km/hr. This model was made from 1981 to -83. The race version were made by Mugen and had larger exhaust, injectors, production type turbo (with 22psi), production type intercooler, and a modified camshaft. These cars did the standing 1/4 mile in 13.5 seconds. They ran very fat tyres (9” front (!) and 7” rear). The official Mugen figure for power output is 138+hp. The cars from the one make racing series were bought by an Australian entrepreneur with the view to continuing the series in Australia. Unfortunately all the vehicles were in a warehouse in Osaka waiting to be shipped when an earthquake struck in 95 and buried the lot. This is the one and only picture I can find of these first version racers. The second picture shows a Honda City Turbo II (the late version) only to show that there are pictures of this version around :-)It is not very different, but you can see the body kit is somewhat 'smoother', among other things.

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