Those Early Honda Civic Type R Sales Forecasts Sure Sound Far-fetched Now

We had not yet seen the 2017 Honda Civic Type R.

We did not yet know at what lofty level the 2017 Honda Civic Type R would be priced.

We didn’t know precisely when we’d have an opportunity to purchase a 2017 Honda Civic Type R. We didn’t know how powerful it would be, whether there’d be a CVT option, if the Civic Si would be powerful enough to decrease Type R demand, or how many aero-aiding elements the Civic Type R would be wearing when it came off the boat from the UK.

But we were told Honda thought it could sell 2,000 Civic Type Rs per month. Which is impossible.

It was April 2015, two years before the 2017 Honda Civic Type R landed on U.S. shores.

“I’d hope we could sell a couple thousand a month,” then American Honda executive vice president John Mendel said.

But American Honda will only have 2,500 Civic Type Rs in its entire (abbreviated) 2017 model year run. According to Car And Driver, the allotment earned by American Honda for the 2018 Civic Type R is only 5,000 cars.

That’s 417 Civic Type Rs per month.

At least in these early stages of the hot hatch’s life, with some Civic Type R buyers paying well in excess of the $34,775 asking price, it appears as though there’s sufficient demand for many more Civic Type R sales.

But 24,000 buyers for a $35K Civic on an annual basis? GTI-beating numbers from a Golf R rival? That seemed doubtful from the get-go, particularly since Honda is notoriously unwilling to run the risk of over-supplying dealers with cars.

In Cars.com’s inventory of 74 Civic Type Rs, 12 are priced by their dealers above $40,000, six are priced above $45,000, and at Bell Honda in Phoenix, Arizona, there’s a 2017 Honda Civic Type R priced at $59,988.

The Civic Type R is, like Honda’s other Civic hatchbacks, built at the company’s British plant in Swindon, England. According to Automotive News Data Center, hatchbacks account for 22 percent of the Civics sold in the U.S. so far this year.

CNET’s Roadshow reported earlier this year that Ford was selling 500 copies of the Focus RS per month with average transaction prices of $42,351. Volkswagen reported an average of 388 Golf R sales per month in the first-half of 2017. Subaru is currently selling around 2,700 WRX and STI sedans per month, but Subaru doesn’t break that pair down by model.

[Image: Honda]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.