![]() ![]() First impressions are that this is a more synthetic experience than previously, in the same way that the new Toyota GR86 is compared with its GT86 predecessor. The Type R is particularly good at making its driver feel at ease, and doing so quickly. Before I set off, a tame Honda racing driver tells me that, whatever mode I’m in, and despite the fact I’m on an unfamiliar circuit first thing in the morning, with cold tyres and wet asphalt, it’s an easy car to feel comfortable with.Īnd he’s right. I drive it on road and track, but both are damp. There are Comfort, Sport and angry +R modes, plus for the first time an Individual set-up that allows the driver to separately tweak things such as the engine note, steering weight, damper stiffness and other parameters. Next to the gearlever is a switch for the drive modes. Honda’s touchscreen infotainment isn’t the last word in excellence but there are phone mirroring and separate climate controls, physical steering wheel buttons and a smattering of other real knobs and dials. But there are brilliantly supportive yet comfortable seats, metal pedals, the trademark turned aluminium gearknob and a wholly round steering wheel with Alcantara trim. Material quality is sound, if not to the levels of premium German cars – which wouldn’t be a problem if this wasn’t nearly priced like them. I like the standard 11th-generation Civic’s cabin, and this fast version is merely a gently massaged variant of it. But increasing the resolution of a sensor has allowed the bar to be stiffened by 60%, said to increase steering immediacty and precision. Other significant mechanical changes involve the steering, an electrically assisted system that had, Honda thought, reached the limit of how stiff its torsion bar could be. So, as you can imagine, it’s still quite hardcore. The previous car needed to be stiff to return the precision Honda wanted here the inherent rigidity should provide most of that, which should allow for a softer set-up.Īlthough ‘softness’ is relative: instead of being at the launch in person, the Type R’s chief engineer Zoomed in via a press conference from Suzuka circuit where he was racing a new Civic. What the increase in body rigidity means, I think, is that the suspension is in the right place to do its job more often, in turn allowing Honda to offer a car with more compliance. ![]() From those points of view this remains an analogue old-school hot hatch, but it’s a school whose last day of term is looming. Time to bring games. At the rear is a multi-link set-up and there are adaptive dampers. Putting 325bhp through the front wheels alone is asking a lot, so the suspension retains its dual-axis strut to reduce the gap between the wheel centre and kingpin so there’s less propensity to torque steer. ![]() There’s a mechanical limited-slip differential, too. ![]() Power drives through a six-speed manual gearbox, as before but with a redesigned gate to reduce the lever’s lateral flex when in gear and, in particular, to ease the second-to-first downshift to make what was already very good more precise. It now makes 325bhp at 6500rpm and 310lb ft at just 2200rpm (previously 316bhp and 295lb ft). The engine is a 2.0-litre turbocharged unit based mostly on the previous car’s, although with a lighter flywheel, increased air intake capacity and a freer-flowing exhaust, among other things. New Honda Civic Type R 2023 UK first driveĪnd, for a front-wheel-drive hatchback, it has quite the swanky set of mechanicals.Weight is up nearly 30kg to 1429kg, mostly because it now needs a petrol particulate filter. But the wheelbase is longer by 35mm and the track widened by 15mm, because Honda wanted a wider and lower stance. The new-generation Type R is based on the 11th-generation Civic, whose platform is an ‘optimised’ version of that of the previous car. One of the reasons, one suspects, that Honda has decided it can charge £46,995 for this new car. And who knows for how long we can have it? By 2024, 22% of all Hondas sold here must have zero tailpipe emissions. But even though Honda is upping the number of its hybrid and electric cars, Type R imports will be restricted to the “hundreds, not thousands”, according to Rebecca Adamson, Honda’s UK’s head of cars. Now there’s a new variant, and such is the rate of change in the car business that it’s the only non-electrified Honda in the UK. The previous-generation Honda Civic Type R was, so the saying goes, the Porsche 911 GT3 of hot hatchbacks it was the hardcore choice among family-friendly sports cars. ![]()
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