Vintage racing footage is always fun to watch. You get to see what was state of the art back in decades past and relive rivalries and adrenaline rushes, but in this video shared by the brilliant Instagram account Japanifornia, we see something truly wacky. What you’re looking at is an open-wheel chassis that’s had the body of a 1991 Honda Prelude dropped on it and a Chevy V8 stuffed into it. The pilot of this absurd Prelude was decorated Aussie racing driver Greg Crick, and he actually won the 1991 Australian Sports Sedan Championship in this mishmash of American, Australian and Japanese parts.
According to its website, the Australian Sports Sedan Championship is one of the most exciting racing series in Australia where the most competitive vehicles are full tube-frame chassis that have composite body panels and V8 engines with over 700 horsepower. This class breeds some of the fastest cars with fixed roofs, and they’re known to approach track records set by open-roof racing cars. Sifting through the gallery of the Sports Sedans National website reveals that many of the cars competing in the series today still look like older models, including vintage Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprints, Mazda RX-7s and Saab 900s, as well as modern cars like Mazda 3s and Nissan Altimas.
The Prelude seen in the Instagram video is one of the coolest looking race cars around, and it’s surprising since you don’t often see racing Preludes with towering rear wings and racetrack-hugging aero kits. In fact, it’s rare to see an early Prelude on the road at all these days, but the oh-so-eighties styling of these low-slung coupes still turns heads. Now stop reading this and start watching the vintage race footage, nerd.