UTMC

I have had several minivans over the past 13+ years, started with an Astro that was my race bike (and people) hauler which made countless (10 or so) trips to Florida and was retired (sold to a friend ) with 250,000 miles on the clock, it was replaced by 1st Gen Odyssey which was replaced by 2nd Gen Odyssey which just got scrapped with 240,000 miles on the clock, it was not the mechanical failure but rather "unstoppable force meets immovable object" that ended it's life prematurely, 80 mph in to a concrete barrier and I was able to limp it home.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of minivans, but all of them have limitations, my first Odyssey was the best handling minivan ever, had 4 doors that opened like a car, it was basically a giant wagon and with a set of 16's form an Acura it handled great but was extremely underpowered with a 4 cylinder 140 HP Accord engine. Also I could not load a full size bike in it, just scooters.

Sold it because I got a V-6 model, 3.5L 245 hp v-tech is no joke, can roast those tires for half a block, but with big ass V-6 upfront, higher center of gravity and now MacPherson suspension (1st Gen had double-wishbone) it handled like a pig. I had always been scheming how to boost the power, improve handling and ditch that horrible automatic transmission which I had repaired 4 times... but now it seems Honda has done it for me, they built an Odyssey to compete in Pikes Peak!!!

550 HP V-6 with a single Turbo, 6-speed from a TL, lowered, stiffened..... I WANT IT!! In the wet it was only 4 minutes slower than Loebs world record braking run in a purpose built rally car

I just have to convince them to sell it to me...

http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2013 ... climb.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

... I wonder how fast that would around the track, at the hands of a tame racing driver.
Some say he can calculate the g-forces in a cornering sportscar in his head, but the concept of kicking a ball into a goal is beyond him.
Some say, when other kids were in fact playing soccer, he was playing soccer mom, on the motorway, in a souped up minivan.
All we know is...

DerGolgo wrote:... I wonder how fast that would around the track, at the hands of a tame racing driver.
Some say he can calculate the g-forces in a cornering sportscar in his head, but the concept of kicking a ball into a goal is beyond him.
Some say, when other kids were in fact playing soccer, he was playing soccer mom, on the motorway, in a souped up minivan.
All we know is...

Shit, there's no "Like" button on this forum, but that deserves it.

They also ran the One Lap of America in that van. That's 9 tracks and 3400mi in 7 days. Pretty fucking impressive. I think over the last few years the same team has been running the previous version of the Odyssey at One Lap:

from http://onelapofamerica.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Truck/SUV Class Winner
34th Overall
Honda Motorsports Alabama
Paul Street, Vincent Coker & Michael Gordon
2012 Honda Odyssey