#CivicTypeR

Yesterday, our man Matt Posky ably wrote about the 2023 Honda Civic Type R and its record-setting lap at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, circling the Green Hell in 7:44.881, enough to best the 2019 Renault Mégane R.S. Trophy-R by over half a second.

This got us thinkin’: with a time like that, what other cars did it beat?

The new Civic Type R is one of the most anticipated Honda vehicles in decades. Besides a few teaser images, the automaker has been characteristically mum on specs and details. That changed late yesterday when Honda dropped a load of new information on the car, including horsepower and engine specs.

It’s been a good few years for tuners who cut their teeth – or at least lusted after – sporty machines from Japan back in the day. Recent developments have seen the return of a Civic Type R and freshened Nissan Z, new versions of which are set to hit our shores later this year.

This week, Honda showed off their new R at the Tokyo Auto Salon in Japan, while video surfaced of Team Nissan demonstrating the aural delights of the forthcoming Z.

Honda has previewed the upcoming Civic Type R, now that it has prototypes testing at the Nürburgring. Knowing that the public would soon be seeing leaked photos of the model whizzing around the Rhineland, the manufacture has offered up some flattering images of it wearing a minimal amount of camouflage.

While the paint scheme still manages to break up its lines, this is probably the best look we’ll be getting of the model until the production version is ready to be revealed. For all intents and purposes, this is the 2022 Honda Civic Type R.

The last time your humble scribe traveled on an airplane to test drive a new car in some location that is “not here” was just over a year ago. That vehicle was the Honda CR-V Hybrid.

While in Tucson, Honda reps told us to keep an eye on our inboxes for an upcoming drive of the updated Civic Type R. This raised my eyebrows, as I knew the changes to the Type R for 2020 were fairly mild, though they did promise some improvements to the already excellent driving dynamics.

The Honda Civic Type R isn’t exactly subtle.

Its boy-racer styling and big wing announce its presence and mission with authority. It’s as if Honda is saying, “Hey, you want subtlety in a hi-po Civic? Get a Si.” Note: The Si is easily identifiable because of a spoiler of its own, albeit one that’s far less ostentatious.

If the current Type R doesn’t exactly blend, what does one make of the rumors swirling across the Internets this morning?

The landlord came around yesterday. No, your author was not in trouble for throwing raucous, all-night shindigs, nor was he in need of a hooked wire to unclog a bathroom sink. The purpose of this visit was automotive in nature.

My landlord had just purchased a car, you see, and was understandably feeling pretty damn proud about it. Instantly, his choice of ride fostered an online discussion about visibility.

In conjunction with the 24 Hours of Nürburgring this past weekend, Mini presented a lightly-disguised John Cooper Works GP well before its scheduled on-sale date in 2020. With more than 300 horsepower on tap, the new JCW GP is almost half a minute faster than its predecessor around the Nordschleife.

While development tuning is still in process, the JCW GP lapped the “Green Hell” in less than 8 minutes. While that is impressive for any front-wheel-drive hot hatch, it will inevitably be compared to the 7:43.80 that was set by the Civic Type R. Whether it reaches that figure or not, it shares outlandish design style and boy-racer looks with the Type R.

Last week, we shared a report on the number of manual transmission-equipped vehicles Toyota sold last year. If you haven’t the time the to re-read the entire post, it was a trifling sum that showcased just how unimportant these types of cars have become among mainstream shoppers — even if there were a couple of bright spots.

However, as the death march of be-sticked automobiles is a topic that gets many enthusiasts out of bed and into the comment section, it wouldn’t hurt to check in on how Honda’s manual tranny sales faired in 2018.

Honda’s hottest front-driver, the Civic Type R, may be homeless once the company’s Swindon, UK assembly plant closes in 2022, but its future will not end there.

Based on comments made at the Geneva Motor Show, it seems the next-generation model will likely tone down its appearance while accepting a helping hand from electrification.

The Honda Civic Type R finally showed up on our shores this year, packing polarizing styling and over 300 horsepower going to its front wheels. Demand has been high and dealers have taken advantage by adding ADM on top of the model’s MSRP. Many customers are happy to pay the premium.

We’ve had the Type R on the road and on the track and, while the opinions on styling vary, everyone seems to be impressed with the performance. However, while it keeps up with much more powerful cars on track, it hasn’t escaped the struggles of a first-year model.

Issues such as overheating, rev-match errors, and gear grinds have been reported by owners and journalists alike. Our own Bark M. experienced a few of these issues while taking the Type R from track to track across the Southeast, and I was there to see some of them and evaluate their impact.

Let me start this review off with a promise: I will try to avoid any “VTEC kicked in, yo” jokes.

That’s in part because the 2017 Honda Civic Type R doesn’t exhibit the behavior of past VTEC engines that inspired the jokes, but mainly because the meme is played out.

Full disclosure: Honda provided us with travel to the Seattle area, and provided us with airfare, food, and lodging. They even used a seaplane to get us from Seattle to the hotel and fed us dinner on a small cruise ship. We got some track time in the Type R in addition to on-road drives. Also, they gave us seat time in go-karts, in which I spun out a lot. They left us with a scale-model Type R which will likely never leave its box. If it does, I will use it for living-room races against a scale-model Ford Focus ST I have from a previous gig, if I ever take that one out of its box.

Launched in mid-June 2017, the 2017 Honda Civic Type R is the first Honda-brand Type R product ever sold in the United States. And after generations of Honda enthusiasts tolerated relatively unimpressive horsepower totals from high-revving four-cylinder engines, Honda didn’t mess around with the latest, turbocharged Civic Type R.

306 horsepower at 6,500 rpm. 295 lb-ft of torque at 2,500 rpm.

Yet before the Civic Type R was even on sale in the United States, we learned that the 10th-generation 2018 Honda Accord would kill the V6 and replace it with, you guessed it, the Civic Type R’s 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder. Incidentally, only a few days after that, we learned that the optional V6 in the Accord’s long-time rival, the new-for-2018 Toyota Camry, would generate 301 horsepower.

Win for Honda? Not so much, as Honda last week revealed a 2018 Accord 2.0T with 252 horsepower and 273 lb-ft of torque.

Huh? What? Why?

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.

The release of the Civic Type R has created a lot of buzz. The recent media launch generated plenty of opinions as to its performance, including some reviewers who believe Honda has underrated the CTR in the same manner it has done with the Accord V6 in the past.

Their speculation seemed to be proven true as a video released from a shop in Puerto Rico showed the car making 301 wheel horsepower. Many outlets reported on the dyno test and, while some showed the data with a little skepticism thrown in, others went all in and told us that the CTR has hidden horsepower.

The real truth behind the dyno test is that it is valueless. We do not have any data on its calibration or the weather, and the dyno operator could have applied any correction factor on the data to boost the results. This is not an isolated case in reporting sketchy dyno results, as I see it multiple times per month from various outlets and, in just about every case, the data and reporting are meaningless.