For all those dirty little jobs at the factory, you know, like transporting garden gnomes about the place, Honda has just built a one-off Civic Type R pick up truck that they want to take to the Nürburgring Nordschleife

You don’t have to check your calendar – it isn’t April 1, and this is a Honda Civic Type R pickup truck… Created by Synchro Motorsport, the racing team that runs out of Honda’s UK factory and competes in the British Touring Car Championship, this thing has just been unveiled with plans to go for a front-wheel drive pickup lap record at the Nordschleife.

“The passion that our engineers have for Honda is shown in our latest creation and we are even considering taking it to the Nürburgring,” said project leader, Alyn James.

Purely a one-off with absolutely no plans to put it into production, the Civic Type R pickup was codenamed Project P during the build, based on a pre-production model that’s been torn apart from the B-pillars back. Where the rear seats and the boot normally go, now there is a flat loading area, and the UK team even managed to retain the massive rear wing that, at least in the standard hatchback version, produces actual downforce. Cleverly it’s a moveable item, so that you can still use this pickup truck for pickupy things and access the cargo area properly.

Underneath the team left everything well enough alone, so it’s still got the same engine, transmission and suspension as the standard road car – it is estimated that Project P will do zero to 100kph in under six seconds (5.7 seconds, stock) and a reach a top speed of 265kph.

With a ‘Ring lap time of 7:43.8 for the production hatchback Civic Type R, Project P has a goal to chase once the team heads to the German Eifel mountains for the record, which will likely go unchallenged for a long time should Honda be successful in nabbing it.