HOT HATCHES
UP RISING
The new Honda Civic Type R won our Car of the Year crown last December – barely three months on, it’s already time to defend it
WORDS PAUL HORRELL
PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD
Just lovely isn’t it? Winter sun caressing Snowdonia hillsides, a soft relief of highlights easing into shadow. Veils of mist in the valleys. Higher up, a crunchy dusting of snow, the foliage wearing a cutting iridescence of hoar frost. In short a perfect day to set off up a footpath, clear the mind and lift the spirits. Not so great for trying to tease out the dynamic differences between five brilliant cars whose abundant power meets slippy roads through the inadequate mediation of wide summer tyres. So for this morning we’ll enjoy the scenery and let the photography happen. The proper driving is for this afternoon and tomorrow, at lower altitudes. I can barely wait to squeeze open the throttles.
Reports of the hot hatch’s death have been exaggerated. The departure of Ford and Renault could easily have struck the species a mortal blow, but the new Civic Type R absolutely sticks to the genre’s rules: front-drive, manual, four-cylinder turbo. You always know that Honda’s Type R badge means a lot more than just a hatch given the once-over with little more than extra power and harder suspension. (Oh and red seatbelts, which we all know are worth a second a mile.) To list completely the depth and detail of engineering changes in an R versus a standard Civic would take until we’d all grown old. Let’s just call it honourably obsessive.
So any Type R arrives to near-bursting anticipation. Whereas when Hyundai said it was working on a hot hatch version of the i30, most of us smiled patronisingly, turned away and muttered “yeah right”. There was no history. Yet it was just bang on, first time out. Again, it had gone through its basic hatch’s engineering end to end, and was so confident that it even gave it a five-year warranty that covers track driving. Now it’s facelifted, and adds a performance biased eight-speed DCT option, fitted here, plus usefully more torque, and some extremely light forged wheels. Oh and it’s a Hunnnn-day now, if you please.