Honda Passport Baja Spec: 1,300-HP Trophy Truck Debuts 2027
Honda Racing Corporation teased a new trophy truck today wearing a nameplate nobody expected to see on a desert racer: Passport. The 1,300-horsepower machine, dubbed the Passport Baja Spec, is built for the top Trophy Truck class of the 2027 SCORE World Desert Championship, and it’s set to make its racing debut at the Baja 500 next June with two-time Baja 1000 winner Bryce Menzies behind the wheel.
The truck gets its global reveal Thursday, Oct. 29, at a private event in downtown Los Angeles hosted by Menzies Motorsports and Race Service, before going public at the HRC booth during SEMA Show in Las Vegas from Nov. 3-6. For a nameplate that’s spent its life as a mid-size crossover shuffling families to soccer practice, that’s a serious jump up the food chain.
Why Honda Is Betting The Passport Name On A Desert Racer
Slapping a production nameplate on a purpose-built trophy truck is a halo move, plain and simple. The Passport Baja Spec shares nothing mechanically with the crossover sitting in Honda dealerships, but the name buys instant credibility in a sport where lineage matters. Trophy trucks are tube-frame, long-travel monsters built to survive hundreds of miles of rocks, whoops, and silt at triple-digit speeds, and HRC is leaning on Honda’s motorsports portfolio to get there. The automaker says the truck brings in tech derived from its Formula 1, IndyCar, and IMSA programs, which is a notable departure from building a desert racer in a vacuum.
From the teaser image, the widebody shell and oversized off-road tires are impossible to miss. HRC hasn’t released a full spec sheet yet, but the long-travel suspension and that 1,300-hp figure put it squarely in line with what wins Baja races outright, not just finishes them.
Honda’s Baja Roots Go Back To 1962
The Passport name might be new to the desert, but Honda’s history there predates the first official Baja race by five years. In 1962, Dave Ekins and Bill Robertson Jr. rode two Honda CL72 motorcycles from Tijuana to La Paz in just under 40 hours, a run that helped set the stage for the inaugural Baja 1000 in 1967. Honda has since become the winningest motorcycle manufacturer in Baja history, with 22 overall wins, and its four-wheel off-road program has racked up 17 class victories since 2015, including four Baja 1000s and five Baja 500s.
That’s the weight Honda is putting behind this new nameplate pairing. It’s not a random marketing exercise; it’s a brand with six decades of desert-racing pedigree deciding its mainstream crossover deserves a shot at carrying that torch.
Bryce Menzies Gets The Wheel
Putting Menzies in the seat is its own statement. He’s a two-time Baja 1000 winner and holds the world record for longest truck jump, at 379.4 feet. HRC hosting the truck’s debut through Menzies Motorsports and Race Service signals this isn’t a one-off publicity stunt but a program built with a proven desert-racing operation from day one.
The Baja 500 debut is still eight months out, so expect more details, likely a full spec reveal, to surface between the SEMA showing and next June’s green flag.
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