Honda Accord Turbo

About This Competition

We get it. A dull-looking burgundy Honda Accord on some slightly questionable wheels doesn’t exactly scream performance car. In fact, it mostly screams “retired accountant on the way to pick up a prescription.”

But here at EP-COMPS, we like cars that surprise you.

Sleepers are just brilliant. There’s something incredibly satisfying about a car that blends perfectly into regular traffic, attracts absolutely no attention and looks like it should have a National Trust sticker in the windscreen… right up until you put your foot down and it disappears up the road considerably faster than anyone was expecting.

They shock the people watching, they shock the people sitting inside them, and the reactions and memories they create are exactly why we love cars like this.

So yes, on the outside this is essentially a sixth-generation Honda Accord in burgundy. It’s even the fancy SE Executive model, so you get plush leather seats, wood trim, BOSE audio and a posh little badge on the boot. It’s comfortable, practical and wonderfully unassuming.

Under the bonnet, however, things have gone slightly off-script.

Sitting in there is the F20B6 engine, except somebody has decided that what Honda’s sensible executive saloon desperately needed was a fairly substantial turbocharger strapped to it.

And if you’ve spent any time around modified Hondas, you’ll already understand why that gets our attention.

The turbo setup has been custom-built, with an upgraded radiator, oil cooler and a large front-mounted intercooler all fitted to help keep temperatures under control. It’s not just a case of throwing a turbo at an engine and hoping for the best; the supporting hardware is there to make this a genuinely usable package.

Then there’s the exhaust.

A full custom Tony Banks system has been fitted, but brilliantly it hasn’t ruined the sleeper element. It isn’t ridiculously loud, it doesn’t have an exhaust tip the size of a drainage pipe and, when you’re cruising around off boost, it genuinely just sounds like an ordinary Honda Accord.

Then the turbo wakes up.

And suddenly the beige-trouser energy disappears.

Now, normally this is the point where we’d give you a lovely big BHP figure and tell you exactly how much power it makes.

We don’t actually know.

And that’s because we’re going to find out.

During the competition we’re taking the Accord to the dyno, where we’ll see exactly what it’s currently producing before turning things up and seeing what else we can safely extract from the setup. With a HONDATA-equipped ECU already fitted, we’ve got the ability to get the mapping properly dialled in and make the most of the hardware that’s already there.

So the power figure you see when this competition launches might not be the power figure it finishes with…

Which makes this one considerably more interesting.

What we already know is that it’s an incredibly entertaining sleeper that hasn’t sacrificed everything that makes a normal road car usable. You can get in it, sit in your heated leather armchair surrounded by wood trim, listen to the BOSE stereo and drive it around perfectly normally without the usual modified-car headaches.

Then, when the opportunity presents itself, put your foot down and remind everyone that the boring burgundy Accord they ignored at the lights has a massive intercooler and a turbo hiding behind that sensible exterior.

Normal traffic on the outside. Boosted Honda underneath.

That is exactly our sort of nonsense.

So, if you fancy adding a proper big-turbo sleeper to your life, you know what to do!