For decades, some of Honda and Acura’s most important racing machines seemed destined for museums, corporate collections or the garages of a fortunate few. Honda Racing Corporation USA is now opening another path. Its new HRC Heritage Racing Program will sell selected historic competition cars to private collectors while offering factory-backed restoration, engine rebuilding and support for owners who want to drive them again.
The distinction matters: not every car enters the program already restored. The headline 2007 Acura ARX-01a is being offered in original, unrestored condition with restoration available, while other machines have already undergone extensive factory-supported rebuilding. Instead of treating its racing history solely as static memorabilia, Honda is creating a business designed to put significant cars back on circuits with much of their original character intact.
Honda Turns Its Racing Archive Into a Collector Business
Honda Racing Corporation USA formally launched the Heritage Racing Program during Monterey Car Week in August 2026. The operation combines several functions that are normally fragmented across auction houses, specialist restoration shops and independent historic-racing teams. HRC will sell selected Honda and Acura racing cars, restore eligible machines, rebuild engines, provide historical consultancy and even dispatch engineers to support owners at tests, track days and races. The first featured offering is the No. 26 XM Satellite Radio Andretti Green Racing Acura ARX-01a, scheduled to appear at The Quail on August 14.
The timing gives the launch an unusually visible backdrop. Honda brought more than 20 significant competition cars and motorcycles to Monterey events, representing Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, SCCA, MotoGP, Dakar and other categories. HRC President David Salters has framed the program around keeping old race cars active rather than allowing historically significant machinery to simply gather dust. For collectors, that changes the proposition: Honda is selling access not only to a physical race car, but also to the people, records and engineering knowledge behind it.
The First Offering Won Sebring on Its Racing Debut
The program could hardly have chosen a car with a stronger origin story than the 2007 Acura ARX-01a. Developed as Acura moved into the American Le Mans Series, the prototype began with the Courage LC75 architecture but was modified so extensively that it received its own ARX-01a homologation. Honda Performance Development, the predecessor to HRC US, developed the car with Wirth Research. Its significance runs deeper than its Acura badge: HRC identifies it as the first complete race car and engine designed and developed by the company’s U.S. racing operation.
Then came Sebring. In March 2007, Bryan Herta, Tony Kanaan and Dario Franchitti drove the No. 26 Andretti Green entry to LMP2 victory in its first race. The car used a naturally aspirated 3.4-litre AL7R V8 producing approximately 480 horsepower, paired with a six-speed sequential transmission and capable of revving to 10,500 rpm. The result immediately gave Acura an endurance-racing pedigree. Nearly two decades later, HRC is inviting expressions of interest in that same chassis, currently described by Honda as original and unrestored.
Factory Restoration Goes Far Beyond Fresh Paint
Historic racing machinery creates a complicated restoration challenge. A car can be made visually perfect yet mechanically inaccurate, while maintaining complete period originality can leave aging electronics, structural components or consumable parts unsuitable for serious track running. HRC says its process begins by completely disassembling the vehicle and cataloguing its components. Original homologation documents, technical drawings, engineering notes, photographs and archived racing data are then used to determine how each machine should be rebuilt.
That does not mean every component remains frozen in time. HRC permits updated materials where safety demands them and can modernize electronics while attempting to preserve the original driving experience. Engines are rebuilt, suspension and braking systems can be overhauled, bodywork can be remanufactured and historic liveries recreated. Completed cars are track tested before returning to use. It is a different philosophy from restoring a competition car simply for concours display: Honda explicitly wants Heritage Racing machines to remain functional race cars capable of being driven in the environment for which they were originally engineered.
Owners Can Bring Honda Engineers Back to the Track
Buying one of these cars does not necessarily end the relationship with HRC. The company is offering trackside engineering support using personnel familiar with its current racing operations. Those engineers can monitor telemetry and sensor information, analyze timing, recommend suspension, aerodynamic and tire changes, interpret driver feedback and help balance outright pace against mechanical durability. In other words, a collector taking a historic prototype to an event could potentially have manufacturer-level technical support in the paddock rather than relying entirely on an independent team learning the car from scratch.
Engine support is another major part of the service. HRC says it can rebuild selected sports-car engines and inspect historic North American racing engines from categories including CART, IRL, WEC and ALMS. Checks can involve borescope inspections, cooling-system pressure tests, documentation reviews and, for certain engines, dynamometer testing. That expertise becomes particularly valuable with low-volume racing powertrains whose original parts, software and operating knowledge may be difficult to find decades later. The result is closer to continuing factory stewardship than a conventional collector-car transaction.
The Catalog Already Extends Beyond One Sebring Winner
The ARX-01a may be the launch car, but HRC’s online Heritage Racing catalog already shows how broad the business could become. Another available machine is the 2009 Patrón Highcroft Acura ARX-02a, an original, unrestored LMP1 prototype. David Brabham and Scott Sharp used the No. 9 car during a season in which they captured the American Le Mans Series LMP1 drivers’ championship and Acura secured the manufacturers’ title. The 4.0-litre naturally aspirated V8 produced approximately 620 horsepower, and the two factory-backed ARX-02a entries combined to win eight of the season’s 10 rounds.
A very different option is the 2017 Acura NSX GT3 chassis 005, which has already been restored and is also being offered to interested buyers. HRC records show the chassis won 22 races and three championships between 2017 and 2022, beginning with Acura NSX GT3 victories at Detroit and Watkins Glen during its maiden IMSA season. HRC purchased the car in 2025, sent it to JAS Motorsport in Italy for restoration and completed the project in April 2026. It retains later Evo handling improvements intended to make the car easier to drive.
Daytona, IndyCar and More Prototypes Are Already in the Pipeline
Honda is also revealing machines that are not yet ready for handover. A particularly notable example is Acura ARX-06 chassis No. 2, currently being restored for eventual sale. The hybrid prototype won the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona on its racing debut with Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Hélio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud. Its approximately 670-horsepower powertrain combines an HRC-developed 2.4-litre twin-turbocharged V6 with the standardized hybrid components used in IMSA’s GTP formula. The same chassis was later driven by Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen during a 2024 demonstration.
HRC also lists a 2016 Honda-powered Ligier JS P2 and Dario Franchitti’s 2010 Dallara IR-05 as under restoration and destined for sale. The Ligier won IMSA races at Laguna Seca and Petit Le Mans and uses a roughly 600-horsepower twin-turbo V6 derived from Honda passenger-car engine architecture. Franchitti’s Dallara carries another level of championship provenance: he used the No. 10 car during his 2010 IndyCar title campaign, a season that included his second Indianapolis 500 victory. HRC says Honda-powered IndyCars will become a larger part of future Heritage Racing offerings.
Earlier Restorations Show Honda Has Already Tested the Formula
The commercial program is new, but the work behind it is not. HRC says it has already restored four Acura ARX-05 DPi endurance racers for use in historic competition. It also supported the return of a 2001 Reynard 01i associated with the late Gil de Ferran and Team Penske. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown acquired the car from Roger Penske in 2026, and HRC supplied a period-correct Honda engine, assisted with its initial start-up and inspected key electronics as the car was prepared to return to the circuit.
An even stronger demonstration is the 2010 Strakka Racing HPD ARX-01c. The car won the LMP2 class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Nick Leventis, Danny Watts and Jonny Kane, completing 367 laps and more than 5,000 kilometres. It later became the first LMP2 car to claim an overall Le Mans Series victory when it defeated the nominally faster LMP1 field at the Hungaroring. HRC has since restored the machine, which is now privately owned and returning to historic competition. Such projects provided much of the practical foundation for turning occasional restoration work into a formal business.
Provenance May Be Honda’s Most Difficult Advantage to Copy
Specialist restorers can recreate body panels, rebuild engines and reproduce liveries, but Honda possesses something much harder to duplicate: the original engineering archive. HRC says its Heritage Racing work can draw on homologation paperwork, drawings, setup information, trackside notes, photographs and, where possible, people who worked on the cars when they were competing. That documentation helps resolve questions that inevitably appear when a racing machine has been modified, repaired and updated repeatedly over several seasons.
Provenance is particularly important in historic vehicles because restoration itself can blur the line between an original competition artifact and a modern reconstruction. Academic work examining documentation in the classic-car sector has similarly highlighted the importance of verifiable restoration records for establishing authenticity, trust and value. HRC’s solution effectively keeps the manufacturer inside that chain of evidence. Pricing for the headline cars has not been publicly announced, and buyers are being directed to make inquiries rather than choose from a conventional price list. What Honda is selling, therefore, is deliberately more exclusive than an old race car: it is a documented piece of motorsport history with an ongoing connection to the organization that created it.
