Forza Motorsport 5: Honda Legends Car Pack

Less than a week behind Forza 5’s Smoking Tire Pack, Turn 10 has created a free bonus collection that’s open to all Xbox One Forza 5 players – the Honda Legends Car Pack.

In chronological order, here’s the new trio of Honda Legends entrants:

• 1984 Honda Civic CRX Mugen
• 1994 Honda Prelude Si
• 2014 Honda Civic Si

Honda Civic CRX Mugen (1984)

Brushing quickly aside the shocking fact that the CRX model is already thirty years old, it’s not a bad little addition to the Forza 5 garage. This car is the foundation of the Honda-Mugen partnership that’s grown into legend as a marque through associations with performance and indeed, ultimately Formula One. The little CRX is a starting symbol for the Honda Legends Car Pack that’s nothing less than a purposeful motor. Knowing how close the racing can be in Forza, I can see a field of these being fun over the course of a race night.

Honda Prelude Si (1994)

As exemplified with the revised bodywork of the CRX compared to the 1984 design above, the latter half of the 1980s saw Honda adopt curves into its design book. Move into the 1990s and it becomes easy to look at the lines of the Prelude here as a step in the evolution toward the rounded, flowing sensibilities of the current era.

Clearly much easier on the eyes than the dated boxy look produced by manufacturers only a few years earlier, this fourth-generation Prelude is a bit of a treat both for its appearance and if it meets your tastes, an engine that rewards the driver at the higher end of the rev range. Given that Honda stopped building the Prelude over a decade ago and as there never were all that many out on the roads, it can be considered something of a rarity too.

Honda Civic Si (2014)

So we get to the present day.

To my surprise, the Civic name has passed forty years old and like those of other brands in its class, the car itself has grown over the years – no longer being the truly compact design of its original form.

All told, this lively 2014 machine is the latest addition to the ninth generation of the Prelude range, looking every bit to be built for speed with its chunky and far more aggressive profile than earlier revisions. The motoring world has been highly critical of its predecessors, with the well-received positive points of the redesign including improvements to the lacking interior build quality and all-important handling developments. Honda seemingly also addressed high-speed stability this time round, so we’re keen to see if that is replicated within Forza (quite the test when controller sticks are most commonly used as steering devices!).

There’s no Type R badge to be seen but this Si option goes some way to being a step above the stock Prelude and what Honda produced in 2013. With the Civic Si, Honda have taken steps beyond the immediately evident aesthetic changes, continuing through to larger, wider tyres and raising the engine output and torque over its older brother. More power, more pull, more grip. For Forza, that’ll do!

In news that’s possibly better than the fact that this is a complimentary car selection for Forza 5, the Honda Legends Car Pack is also available now.

Tune them, mod them, paint them, race them – and remember to push that VTEC!