Honda Type R

When the global financial crisis struck five or six years ago, Honda was forced to retract into submission in a desperate attempt to survive. To add insult to injury, F1 team leader Ross Brawn opted to save Honda’s F1 team and slotted Mercedes engines in the back of chassis designed and built to carry Honda engines and Jenson Button drove it to the world championship while the former Honda team won the F1 makers title too.

That must have been a bitter pill to swallow, but that’s not all Honda also culled off many of its sportier road cars S2000 included, concentrating rather on green tech. And survival. It must have worked because today Honda is back on the front foot and ready to retake the world by storm and it’s doing it by bringing back that performance bent that we’ve so missed over the past few years headed by a new NSX, a F1 return and of course, the new Civic Type R.

Speaking at the Mobilio launch last week, Honda SA boss Graham Eagle could not hide his excitement and went straight for the jugular as he unveiled the local branch’s plans, playing a delightful video on the Civic Type R before proclaiming its arrival midyear 2015.

There’s plenty other great Honda news before that as you will read on this spread, but clearly the company is just as excited as we are about Type R bringing back that extra Honda sting we’ve so missed in the recent past.

We cover the other models and introduce the clever Mobilio elsewhere on this spread, but like my old racing buddy Graham Eagle, it’s the R that has our attention right now…

Type R has been building up for a while already with show concepts, a consistent presence at the Nurburgring and a lot of excitement around what promises to be the fastest front wheel drive car in history. The blue car with the stripes that some call gaudy (we love them!) was Honda’s most recent Paris motor show concept this month albeit a thinly veiled preview of the upcoming Civic Type R.

It follows a similar Geneva concept in March and we believe that it won’t change much before the final production version goes on sale in South Africa in the middle of next year.

Honda has however confirmed some technical details on its new flyer that the company warned engineers must break the 7 min 54.3sec Nürburgring front-wheel-drive lap time before it hits the road. We now know that Type R will be powered by an all-new turbocharged Earth Dreams Technology 2-litre i-VTEC petrol four-pot producing ‘more than 210 kW,’ although insiders have whispered figures closer to 225 kW and north of 400 Nm.

Honda says the Euro 6 emissions-mill will redline at 7000 rpm in typical VTEC fashion while also benefiting the low-end grunt expected from a turbo engine in a package promised to offer ‘a sensational and unmatched driving experience to begin a new performance era for Honda.’ In that vein Honda has resisted using a semi automatic transmission and will only build the new Type R with a 6-speed manual gearbox.

“The new Type R engine is unrivalled in raw power, torque and response and the manual transmission allows the driver to select the right gear every time,” Civic Type R project leader Suehiro Hasshi explains. “The concept of the new Civic Type R is it is to be the complete driver’s car.”

Sources further suggest a sub-6 second 0-100km/h while the likes of the dual kingpin mechanical ‘steer axis’ front suspension to reduce torque steer under acceleration and a four-point Adaptive Damping with a radical ‘+R’ driving mode to improve engine and steering response, aggressively tweak the torque mapping and stiffen suspension for more aggressive and focused driving; will be standard.

Taking more than just its genes from Honda’s World Touring Car racers, Type R borrows those looks too, rides 30mm lower than a standard Civic hatch and benefits huge front and rear spoilers, cool flared wheel arches, ‘exceptional’ aerodynamic downforce and enhanced cooling in a body that shares just the roof, front doors and tailgate with the hatch.