HONDA’S Civic Type R has long enjoyed an often fanatical following, sometimes bordering on the obsessive.
At first it was a pretty simple concept.
Take a small hatchback shopping car, lower it, stiffen everything up and install a mad-as-a-box-of-bees engine.
The old Type R was pretty much all about the engine (not bees). It was a jewel. Two litres, four cylinders with double overhead cams and VTEC variable valve timing that resulted in a sort of two-stroke, splitpersonality (and addictive) power delivery.
As power units go it was light, small and compact, very tunable and massively over-engineered. It was Honda doing what Honda does best. But the highlight was the noise it made, especially when being thrashed. Because it was normally aspirated, the noise inside the cabin was a snarling, howling and harmonic induction roar as litres of swirling air and fuel rushed through the inlet trumpets.
As induction noises go, it was up there with the best. It might have been based on a shopping car but the sound was pure race car. It’s not surprising it had fans. And customers.
The Ariel Atom uses Type R engines and so do some of the best Lotus Elise conversions I’ve ever driven. It’s a stonker, if ever there was one. But times change. EU emission targets have curbed this sort of sonic fun by making normally aspirated performance engines pretty much a thing of the past.
Take BMW’s epic V8 engine in the previous generation M3. It was horrifically thirsty (I once managed to demolish a full tank in under 80 miles) but so sweet to drive, with amazing rev-happy throttle response, linear torque delivery and an induction soundtrack to die for. The new M3 is a turbo-charged straight six.
It’s faster, more economical, less polluting but it’s not the same raw-experience car to drive as the old V8 version. It’s not the car makers’ fault – it’s emission targets and how they are measured. Every car maker is now downsizing engines and turbocharging them to regain performance.
A turbo engine, when it’s being measured on part-throttle tests, runs very little boost and is thus more efficient and pukes out less CO2.
And that’s the route Honda have taken with their latest Type R – they’ve turbocharged it. The results on paper are pretty phenomenal – this here is a 170mph hatchback with five doors, a big boot and space for four big adults.
It’ll rocket to 62mph in under six seconds, and with 400Nm of torque on tap it makes mincemeat of the 1,380kg fully fuelled weight at practically any speed.
The aero package is visually a bit “marmite” but it’s not just for show. It works.
The faster you go, the more the car is pinned to the tarmac. Grip is immense.
So is agility. And this is a key advantage over its main rival the Ford Focus RS which can feel a bit porky, especially in really fast changes of direction.
Not the Type R. It flicks like a bogey in double maths and stops faster than a board rubber on the back of the head thanks to those massive Brembo discs and sticky 235/35-19 tyres.
That 310PS is a lot of power to put through front wheels but the steering wheel will only squirm around on full power across rough or changeable surfaces.
The six-speed gearbox is still beautiful to use, as are all major controls. But that buzz of the old Type R – the insane revs and insane noise – is gone.
And that’s a shame. The new car will pull cleanly away in sixth gear down to 25mph but turbo lag is present, particularly when you lift mid-corner and reapply the gas when there is a noticeable and sometimes mildly annoying delay.
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