HONDA CIVIC TYPE R
RETURN OF THE... KING
HOT HATCH OF THE YEAR
It’s less ugly, certainly, but can the new Civic Type R actually improve on its predecessor? We dispatch Chris Harris to the TG test track for an answer
WORDS CHRIS HARRIS
PHOTOGRAPHY
P
HMARK RICCIONI
HONDA CIVIC TYPE R
Price: over £45,000 (est)
Engine: 1996cc turbo 4cyl, 324bhp, 310lb ft
Transmission: 6spd manual, FWD
Performance: 0–62mph in 5.4secs, 171mph
Economy: 29.4mpg, 186g/km CO2 Weight: 1,429kg
“ONLY HONDA WOULD CHOOSE TO LAUNCH A VERY HOT, FRONT-WHEEL-DRIVE HATCHBACK AT THE END OF 2022”
Now go and watch the video on BBC iPlayer
Some of you will remember motoring journalist and beard enthusiast LJK Setright. He was a celebrity car writer long before anyone had made a television programme about the horseless carriage. His writing was hugely complicated and he held some controversial opinions. He advocated very fast driving on public roads, he preferred automatic gearboxes back when they were mostly crap – but he was rightly viewed as having very eclectic tastes that he backed up with insight and knowledge. Which is why people like me found it baffling that he liked Hondas.
Because for most people Honda just made rather boring cars for people who retired to Bournemouth. It took a crazy looking English dude to educate a geek like me about this Japanese company which appeared to be obsessed with over-complicating everything.
Want a new Civic in the UK? Your choice is a 178bhp hybrid with a CVT gearbox... or this. No sitting on the fence
Setright marvelled in the engineering quality of a company that was perfecting rear-wheel steering systems and variable valve timing when most European carmakers were wondering how to make central locking reliable – and failing. Most people still don’t know just how eccentric and unorthodox Honda has been, and there isn’t much latitude for raw innovation now, but Honda remains to geeks like me a cut above the ordinary.