Story and Photography by Tara Hurlin
The wide stance and giant wings make it the one Honda Civic that Batman would drive. And like the Batmobile, this one goes out in all kinds of weather. “Snow makes for great rooster tails,” Cody Loveland, the car’s builder, says with a grin.
The Civic, lovingly called the Beastie Hatch, is now his muse for aerodynamic experimentation. “An aero car is designed from the tire up,” he explains. “We fit the largest, widest tires we could in order to handle the aero loads, and then we built the largest aero kit ever fit to a Civic.”
The Beastie Hatch’s aero concept is based on the CFD-designed and real-world-proven front and rear wings found on Cody’s Enviate Hypercar program. This gave Cody a solid base as well as a road map for the radical underbody aero.
Cody and Aric Streeter, the Civic’s current owner, are just starting to tap into the next stage of development: getting every component to work seamlessly. In fact, wet fall testing in 2017 proved that the aero was working, but Cody didn’t know to what extent until he drove it during our photoshoot. That’s when he discovered that the 700 lbs./in. springs could bottom out under downforce on Northern Michigan’s weathered roads.
Since then, he’s resolved the issue with Eibach 1450 lbs./in. springs in the front and 1100 lbs./in. rear main springs. He also added helper springs inside of the main springs: an additional 2000 lbs./in. of support in the front and 1250 lbs./in. for the rear. The helper springs only activate under significant suspension compression, such as heavy aero load or extreme weight transfers.
This setup proved successful during a light shakedown at the Empire Hill Climb. “We were able to measure the ride height compression at speed and work backwards through other known variables to find real-world downforce,” Cody explains. “In short, it’s a lot. We won’t publish actual numbers until we hit a wind tunnel with load cells.”
Nope, not a K-series. Not a B-series, either. The Beastie Hatch is powered by an Acura V6 paired with a Garrett turbocharger
You won’t find one of Honda’s inline-fours under the Beastie Hatch’s hood. Instead, it’s a V6 out of an Acura TL Type-S, force-fed by a Garrett turbo.
This isn’t just any turbo, either. It’s the very unit that endured an intense impact on Pikes Peak in 2013. That was when Cody wrecked his original Enviate, the one based on an Acura NSX.
“I wanted to see if it legitimately held up from the 2013 crash,” he says of the turbo. So far, so good.
Since our photoshoot, Cody adopted a Link ECU. During a quick dyno session before last fall’s #Gridlife Track Battle at Michigan’s GingerMan Raceway, Cody tuned the new setup on his Mustang chassis dyno. At 14 psi of boost, the Civic made 497 horsepower along with 426 lb.-ft. of torque at the wheels.
The secret sauce used to make the Beastie Hatch mixes together math, testing and home-brewed aero aids. Now comes the next step: sorting out the creation and overcoming the last few issues.
Cody headed to that #Gridlife event for a public shakedown, knowing that some issues still weren’t fixed due to time constraints. One of them involved the steering, as the car was still running the stock Civic CX rack, a setup designed around 165-series tires. Not only was the car now wearing 335-series rubber, but it was making another Civic’s worth of downforce, too.
The current dampers were the second major unknown, as Cody knew their valving wasn’t ideal for the giant spring rates. But with winter approaching, Cody and Aric just wanted to record a baseline to help them map out their winter workload.
Cody was right: The steering was so heavy that his hands and arms cramped up during the 7-minute sessions, and accelerating induced porpoising as the Civic powered through the tighter-radius apexes.
He still managed a 1:41 lap-on a low boost setting–before the skies opened up. At least the outing confirmed the car’s problems and that the aero and suspension worked as planned.
Cody Loveland, on the right, built the Beastie hatch; Aric Streeter now owns the car. Together they have been tweaking and developing the Civic into a worthy competitor.
Cody admits that he doesn’t work with cookie-cutter designs. There’s always a first draft with more variations to follow. “Constant improvement is my motto,” he says. “By the time I’m done with Beastie Hatch, it will be an insane track machine.”
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Rupert Berrington Photos
Cody Loveland, builder of the Beastie Hatch, has a lofty goal: Conquer Pikes Peak. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream, though, as he’s already built three cars for the event. The first entry finished third in class, while the second car–the one based on an Acura NSX–wrecked badly, breaking in half before catching fire.
For 2017 Cody arrived with his Enviate Hypercar, the special shown here that was built to conquer the mountain. He didn’t drive it, though. Motorsports veteran Paul Gerrard, who played the part of The Stig on the American version of “Top Gear,” sat in the driver’s seat. The team’s aero engineer, Sebastien Lamour, works for Sauber’s Formula 1 team. How’d they all meet? Facebook.
During the practice sessions, Paul ran second to Porsche works driver Romain Dumas, the reigning champ who has pretty much dominated the event since 2014. Race day looked even more promising, as Paul posted the day’s fastest speed and set a record of 147 mph through the course’s fabled Picnic Grounds.
But then his luck soured. The engine started to overheat and, finally, stalled in the last hairpin. From our own report: “Gerrard spent an agonizing 35 seconds trying to restart it. He let the car coast backward and bump-started the engine, finally crossing the finish line with a time of 10:15-good enough for second in class.”
Force Engineering took over the Enviate for the 2018 Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb brought to you by Grand Turismo, but an engine failure and fire during testing left the car too damaged for the main event. As for Cody, a second Enviate is in the works.
Those look like factory front shock towers, I'm surprised they survive those spring rates, especially once the inner springs are engaged.
I have to keep my cars from ending up at this level of insane. It's VERY tempting, but combine incompatible roads, lack of venues that would highlight an aero car's capabilities, and perhaps most importantly, I have no idea beyond theory what I'm doing with aero design, and... you see where I'm going with this.
Love this little Honda though, definitely has a presence!
Be sure to follow Tara on Instagram she has a great feed.
500whp in a car that probably weighs 2000 lbs, with enough aero and tires to put it to the ground, this might be one of the more ridiculous fwd builds I've seen.
it would be interesting if someone took this shell and shoved a 4th gen Acura TL-S AWD drivetrain in it. It would be a ton of fabrication and custom parts (driveshafts and axles would have to be custom built), and who knows how long the stock AWD drivetrain would last with a turbo pushing power through it, but it would theoretically be amazing.
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