When James Houghton decided to go wheel to wheel racing it was not a decision he made lightly. He had been thinking about it for quite a while and when Northern Speed purchased his Acura Integra Type R Time Attack car and still wanted to him to drive it opened up an avenue he had not previously considered. His original thoughts were to convert the Type R for Gridlife Touring Cup duty but now he could start with a clean sheet. He had been looking for a clean Integra as he loved the look of the car. For sure whatever he got had to remain in the Honda/Acura family. “I’m a died in the wool Honda fan,” he said. “Then I came
to complete the build of the car. Mitch and Berto had also been crewing for us quite bit so the road trips offered up a bunch of time for discusions regarding the upcoming race car build. The plan was to build the car to suit Gridlife’s Touring Cup rules where their Rules Committee’s goal was to create a quality balance of performance across a broad array of potential cars, without any tight restrictions on vehicle build and design while
across a partially finished Acura TSX in Lexington, KY. It had a lot of good parts on it, some I would use, others I could sell off and get good money for them, so it seemed a good deal. I put a deposit on the car but it would be three months before I actually headed out to bring it home.” He went on, “This past year I have been using Mitch Hemmen at Unit 2 Fabrication more and more and in the meantime they moved into one of the units in our building, it just made sense for them
offering low cost options to the racers. It meant mixing weight with horsepower, tires and aero. We won’t go in to that here as it is pretty involved and can be found online at www.grid.life/gridlife-touringcup-gltc. You may have noticed from the photo below that there is no wild aero like Jim’s Type R. With no front splitter the rear of the
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