Honda Civic Type R Hot Hatch

Straight away you can feel that the Honda Civic Type R is a practical hot hatch. It is quite spacious, but has a fairly low driving position with simple instruments. Drive off down a poorly surfaced road, and you know this is a hot hatch the ride is hard.

But you know that this is a quick car soon not surprising really, top speed is 146 mph, and the Civic Type R can accelerate to 60 mph in 6.6 seconds. That’s 0.4 seconds quicker than the turbocharged Golf GTI. Makes you wonder.

I’m also wondering whether this unusual gear lever will work. Instead of poking up from a central tunnel, it’s high up on the boringly flat-faced center console which instead of going right down to the floor, hangs down from the fascia. It isn’t far away, but my first thought is that it was done to make the bog standard Civic look spacious, not to give sporty shifts. But I was wrong - the shifts are slick.

And it’s all very civilized; quiet, with the engine comfortable right down below 2,000 rpm. This has always been a hallmark of Honda engines, for four-wheelers and two-wheelers.

Turn onto the motorway, and I’m in familiar territory: the engine sings, then howls as the revs build up, reaching 8,000 rpm before you’ve got time to think. Slot a higher gear, and off it goes.

On these sort of roads, the ride is pretty good, and the car cruises along at any speed you want and usually the Civic Type R wants to go a bit quicker than I expect it will.

Good instruments, but rev-counter could be bigger

Clear instruments, black figures on white do the job fairly well, but the rev-counter should be the same size as the speedo. Instead it is smaller, tucked in to one side where it can be partly obscured by the steering wheel.

So far so good. But I’m just scratching the surface. This 2.0 litre engine kicks out a cool 200 bhp at 7,400 rpm, and the red line is at 8,000 rpm. Maximum torque is only 144 lb ft (196 Nm) at 5,900 rpm, but owing to Honda’s latest variable valve timing system, which moves the goal posts again, you get a good spread of power lower down.

Honda has always used a low-lift cam for low speed operation, and a high lift cam for high speeds, whereas most competitors rely on the simpler but less efficient system than alters the point at which the inlet valves open.

On the Type R, you get variable valve lift/opening period combined with variable inlet valve opening point, so you get the best of both worlds. And it works a treat.

You must keep the revs up

To be frank, I expected the high-revving engine to be a bit lacking in low speed power which it is - and to be a bit of a chore to keep to revs up, which it most definitely isn’t. The reason is simple: the ratios in the six-speed box are ideally matched to typical road conditions, so you’re always in the right gear.

Like most cars of its type, nothing much happens when you downshift from sixth to fifth you need to go to fourth of third. In fact, with maximum speeds in the lower gears of about 40, 58 and 80 mph, you find that third copes with almost anything when you’re hurrying on ordinary roads.

So here’s a comfortable cruiser, easy to use, decent luggage space, but is this a hot hatch? Already feels like it. But there’s one stretch of road we use for testing where you come to a T-junction, turn left, whizz round a double bend with walls each side and after 100 yards or so turn right off the road.

Well, the Civic Type R hurtled round those bends and turned in sharply, after I’d grabbed second. Quite unperturbed, round she went, no screaming under steer, with just a little roll like a thoroughbred,.

Good handling gets better

By this time I had already found that the handling was very competitive, swinging round bends carrying the speed through the bend with ease, even uphill. Most front-drivers don’t do that well. As I progressed along the twisty roads, I started to feel the character of the car, especially when I was baulked by a Volvo driver who decided to show me the way by cutting all the corners and driving flat out. Mister Type R just kept up on a light throttle without needing to cut any corners.

Of course, the Honda Civic Type R is front-wheel drive like every other Civic, and shares the fairly large under body of the others, so when you enter any corner you have to set the car up by turning the wheel before you enter the bend to drag the front end into the bend. It’s not a very marked characteristic, and you soon get used to it. The only front-wheel drive car that does it much better is the new MINI Cooper S, which is much shorter.

So you turn a bit early, and the steering responds well, going where you point it. As you enter the corner, the car lurches a bit as it rolls, and then it seems to dig itself in, not rolling any more, and driving round. The other side of the coin is that this is a hard ride. Fine on good surfaces, but hard on ridged surfaces and moorland roads where nothing is flat, but instead you’re traversing all sort so bumps and undulations.

All the time, though, you’re aware that this a pretty rigid body reinforced on the Type R with horizontal struts between the rear wheel arches and also at the base of the front bulkhead. The rear wheel arches are also reinforced.

Pushing along fast on these roads, from time to time the Type R seems to be leaping from crag to crag rather than following the road, but it has enough wheel travel not to get airborne on the crests. Overall, the ride is a good balance, supple over normal roads, and able to handle undulations.

Instant response to go with the great handling

But does this go like the hottest hot hatch? Yes. Flooring the throttle at 4,000-5,000 rpm brings instant response that take the revs to 7,500-8,000 rpm for the next shift, or to the next bend. The brakes, when you need them and mostly you don’t because the car just sails round the curves are good without being outstanding.

One of the reasons the car performs better than you’d expect is that it is not too much overweight it is about 300 lb lighter than the VW Golf GTI, and that makes a big difference.

When you enter the curve you just set the lock and watch the car go round, feeling the pressure as the g force presses you against the side of the seat, and you sail around with neutral steering. Seats are good, but quite wide, by the way.

Approaching a slower corner, you slot down to third heel-and-toe if you want, but the gearbox is so good you don’t need to and turn in, feel the roll settle and turn.

Put the power on as you go round, and wait for the under steer to build up. It does, but just a touch unless you’re trying very hard, as this toe-control front suspension, as they call it, digs in pulling you round. You don’t usually need to lift-off to bring the nose in because you just put on a touch more lock.

Push very hard on a long, slow bend and you can get the under steer to build up, so you need to put on quite a bit of extra lock, and might want to lift off a touch to tuck the nose in. But if you enter slightly slower, and accelerate as you get to the apex you’ll corner faster because the speed builds up; when you go in too fast and get excessive under steer you lose speed through the corner.

For practical purposes, the Civic Type R has superb handling, and you can believe not just that Honda developed it round the Nurburgring, but knew what they were doing when they did so.

Gearshift is absolutely brilliant!

What about that gearshift? Does it work? It is absolutely brilliant. Ok, to be perfect, it would offset toward the driver by an inch or two instead of being in the middle of the car, but it is superior to anything in the competition. The lever is close to the wheel, at exactly the right height, the travel is short, and movement is slick and quick.

And as I mentioned earlier, the ratios are just right. Not only do you shift gears quickly, but you soon do it instinctively. Just the best.

I can’t say the Honda Civic Type R is definitely the best hot hatch, because of the lack of feel in the steering. You can feel the bumps all right, but you don’t get the signals you should be getting as the under steer builds up.

This is a disappointment, and not inevitable with electric power-assisted steering, which is what they have on the Civics. It is also a bit low geared for this sort of car. That apart I rate this car as brilliant, and I think this is my favorite hot hatch, because everything else is so good it is really fun to drive and you can drive it surprisingly fast.

Of course, Civic Type R is now going out of production, and we'll have to wait awhile before we get the new one, which will look completely different, as our picture of the 2006 European Civic shows; in North America the new Civic is slightly more conservative looking, but straightaway there is the Si Coupe, which is a good starting point.