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HKS turned things up to an unbelievable level to beat a GT-R Nismo around a race track with a little Suzuki Swift.

Over the years, the Suzuki Swift has become the highest-selling car from the Japanese brand in all the markets where it is present. Suzuki left the US long ago, which is why American buyers are devoid of the third-generation Swift. The Suzuki Swift has become one of the best entry-level hatchbacks by offering a perfect blend of economy, practicality, and exciting driving appeal.

While the Swift has an image of an economy-oriented budget hatchback in global markets, many car tuners went one step ahead and have made it an absolute hoot to drive, especially the fast and hot Swfit Sport. However, it looks like the Suzuki Swift Sport has reached the pinnacle of performance and hooliganism with the HKS TRB-04, a heavily-modified Swift by HKS Co Ltd from Japan.

While the whole car looks wild from the word ‘go’, what has caught our attention is its claim to being faster than the mighty Nissan R35 GT-R Nismo, one of the fastest production cars from Japan. We found more about this heavily-modified Suzuki Swift and got amused by the amount of craziness behind this project.

Related: Here's How The Suzuki Swift Compares With Its Rivals

HKS Co Ltd loves to call this heavily-modified third-generation Suzuki Swift Sport 'HKS TRB-04'. This alphanumeric name of this Swift has significance in itself. The ‘TRB’ in its name stands for Tsukuba Record Breaker, which HKS likes to call all of its heavily-customized cars for their intentions of breaking speed records at Tsukuba racing circuit, Japan.

The ’04’ in its name tells that it is the fourth project car from HKS in its attempt to recreate new speed records at the Tsukuba racing circuit. While the first car ‘HKS TRB-01’ was a Toyota Altezza, the second car ‘HKS TRB-02’ was a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII. The third car in the installment, named ‘HKS TRB-03’ was a Toyota GT86, which currently is the outright record holder at Tsukuba.

After achieving a record around the Tsukuba racing circuit with the HKS TRB-03 Toyota GT86, HKS moved forward to its next project, the HKS TRB-04, in 2019. For this project, the third-generation Suzuki Swift Sport became the base car. It received significant modifications to make it as fast as possible.

The modifications began with the 1.4-liter four-cylinder K14C turbocharged petrol engine, which produces 138 hp of maximum power in its stock form. However, the engineers at HKS tuned this engine heavily to ensure that it is much faster than one could believe it to be. In addition to this engine tune-up, HKS also moved the driving position to the center. Yes, just like the McLaren F1 The TRB-04 received a centrally-placed steering wheel and single-seat for maximizing weight distribution in the car.

As weight-saving measures, HKS stripped the car with many unwanted plastic and metal parts inside-out. To reduce its weight, even more, HKS introduced a carbon fiber roof, carbon fiber rear quarter panels beyond the door panels, and a carbon fiber front end of the space frame. It also received lighter alloy wheels and wider tires to ensure maximum grip on the track.

Related: 10 Things We Just Learned About The 475 Hp HKS Toyota GR Yaris

With all these modifications, the HKS TRB-04 Suzuki Swift hit the Tsukuba racing circuit in 2019, where in its first attempt, it managed to secure its fastest lap time of 56.919 seconds. While this hot lap time was incredible for a front-wheel-drive car, HKS firmly believed that the car had way more potential than this.

The engineers at HKS soon realized that the 1.4-liter engine of the Suzuki Swift was not enough, even in its heavily-modified version. It encouraged the folks at HKS to replace this engine with a bonkers 4G63 2.0-liter turbocharged petrol engine from the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII. In its stock version, this engine produces 276 hp of power. However, this engine was prepped up to its full potential, which shot up its maximum power output to a mind-boggling 640 hp. And if this figure doesn't seem enough, this engine claimed an even higher power output of 720 hp with Nitrous... to just the front wheels!

After this heart surgery, the HKS TRB-04 Suzuki Swift achieved a hot lap of 55.498 seconds, thus making it the fastest front-wheel-drive car around the Tsukuba racing circuit at that time. But, HKS couldn’t hold this record for long, as another heavily-modified 800-hp Honda Civic by PZ Tuning Motorsports broke its record just after a month with a lap time of 53.071 seconds.

However, the TRB-04 Suzuki Swift still has a quicker lap time than the Nissan R35 GTR Nismo on this track. Godzilla, in its most extreme form recorded the lap in 59.360 seconds. Who in the world would have thought a Suzuki Swift Sport could be faster than the mighty GT-R, and that too by a significant margin of 4.862 seconds!

Hailing from India, Jeo has grown up dreaming about a red-colored Porsche 911. This fascination led him to study more about cars and their functionality in his automotive engineering days from the past. His passion for writing about cars directed him towards blogging, which he has been doing for almost a decade.