Category: Hot Hatchbacks 
Price Range: No data available
Fast, good steering feel, great fun to drive, relatively subtle styling.
Not a lot, just the irritating split rear tailgate glass and poor rearward visibility.
Hot hatch masochists and keen track dayers might be disappointed with Honda's decision to make this Type-R a little easier to live with. For the rest of us, however, it's a very welcome development.
The Honda Civic Type-R: an uncompromising hot hatch with great performance, right? But one that is hard-riding, noisy and not particularly inspiring until you rev it up to nearly 7,500rpm? Wrong.
That may have been true for the first-generation model, but Honda has listened carefully to feedback from its customers and this time around, the Type-R's is considerably easier to live with on a day-to-day basis.
Honda is at pains to insist that this doesn't mean the Type-R's gone soft, though. There's 198bhp on offer from the 2.0-litre i-VTEC engine and performance has not been watered down: 0-62mph still comes up in 6.6 seconds and top speed is a pretty healthy 146mph, should you have access to a track or an airstrip to fully test this out. It's also actually more rewarding at lower engine speeds: since the maximum torque of 142lb-ft now peaks at 5,600rpm, rather than at 6,500rpm, in-gear acceleration has been improved, and you can make swift progress without having to set the engine screaming. Well, not quite so loudly, anyway.
The Civic Type-R comes in three-door form only, with a choice of standard or GT specification levels: the GT pack adds front fog lights, dual-zone climate control, cruise control, side curtain airbags, a lockable glovebox, power-folding door mirrors and automatic headlights.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Honda Civic Type-R
wrote on 04 06 2008
wrote on 28 02 2008
wrote on 06 01 2008