At this year’s edition of the Monterey Automotive Week, Acura decided to lift the veils off the ARX-05. A prototype racer designed to win races in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the Acura Racing eXperimental generation5 will make its competition debut in January 2018 at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Team Penske has been chosen to campaign two cars.
The successor of an endurance prototype series started in 1991, the fifth-gen model is the product of the Acura Design Studio in Los Angeles. Headed by global creative director Dave Marek, the design for the ARX-05 include a handful of visual details that hark back to road-going models (i.e. the NSX).
Sporting underpinnings derived from the Oreca 07 chassis, the business end of Acura’s new prototype racecar is a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6. The engine, loosely based on the J35 engine found in production-spec vehicles that include the MDX, RLX, RDX, and TLX. Up to this point in time, Team Penske can confirm that one of the two ARX-05 cars will be teamed with ex-F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya and 2016 Prototype class winner Dane Cameron.
"Right from the start, Acura has raced – and done so successfully,” declared Acura Motorsports head honcho Art St. Cyr. "We've won with the Acura Integra Type R, the RSX, the first-generation NSX and with the Le Mans prototypes,” he added, and the ARX-05 is expected to deliver some wins.
It won’t be easy for Acura to finish on the podium, though, for competition is pretty serious for the 2018 season. On the prototype field, the automaker will face off with the likes of Cadillac, Nissan, Mazda, Oreca, Dallara, and Riley, teams that have repeatedly proven their worth in endurance racing.
And truth be told, if anyone can make the ARX-05 work, The Captain can. Don't, however, expect a bit of success in the motorsport arena to help Acura bounce back in terms of sales, especially when it comes down to sedans.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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