New Honda Civic Type R arrives in Geneva
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A new Honda Civic Type R arrives at the Geneva Motor Show, based on the latest Honda Civic and with more power and technology. Launches summer 2017.
Arriving almost too late to be sold concurrently with its more prosaic siblings as Honda prepared for a new Civic, just 2,500 came to the UK, the last 100 of which were Type R Black Editions.
But this time round Honda aren’t hiding from the ‘Green’ police, and this new Civic Type R has been planned from the outset and arrives just months after the new Civic was launched. And it shows.
The new Type R may sport pretty much the same engine as its short-lived predecessor – albeit with a small 10bhp increase in power to 316bhp – a revised six-speed manual gearbox and, stubbornly, still front-wheel drive. It also keeps its Brembos and MacPherson struts but gets an independent multi-link set-up at the back.
But it’s more cohesive to behold than the cobbled-together look of the last Type R, and it comes with grown-up stuff like adaptive dampers, Driving Modes – Comfort, Sport and R+ – which tweak all the stuff that matters to suit your mood, and a rev-matching function (mind you, even MINIs get that now).
All that’s probably more important this time round because the new Type R is heading for the USA too, and although hot hatch fans in the UK and Europe could live with the old Type R’s choice of ‘it hurts’ or ‘my spine has crumbled’ mode options, the Colonials probably wouldn’t.
If a new FWD Honda Civic Type R floats your boat, rather than the 4WD Focus RS and Golf R, you can actually phone your local Honda dealer already to bag one of Swindon’s first new Type Rs for delivery in the summer. But how much will the new Honda Civic Type R cost?
Honda aren’t saying, but the last Type R started at £30k when it arrived, and that has gone up to £32,500 for the Black Edition cars last year. It seems likely that will be the starting point for the new Type R.
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