Used Honda Accord Type R (1998 – 2002) – review, history and specs of the forgotten Japanese icon

The Honda Accord Type R belonged to a category of car that effectively no longer exists: the sports saloon. Once populated by Mercedes 190 2.3s, Peugeot 405 Mi-16s and brawny but compact six-cylinder 3-series, their modern equivalents have grown portly, the more blue-collar models have been absorbed by crossovers, and M3s and C63s now occupy a different space entirely.

We can be thankful to Honda then for having a proper go at it before the segment disappeared. Just as they did with the Civic and Integra Type R, Honda’s engineers turned their humdrum family wagon into a lighter, more focused sports car, complete with screaming engine, less weight and sharper handling.

That made the Accord Type R one of our favourite sports saloons at the time, up there with Impreza Turbos and Mitsubishi Lancer Evos. With nothing quite like it on the modern market, it’s still a desirable performance car today, even if it has gone a little forgotten compared to its Civic Type R and Integra Type R siblings and other JDM icons besides.

Honda Accord Type R history

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Have you ever seen one without the wing? I’m not convinced I have. Put down £23,000 for a Honda Accord Type R in late 1998 and, were you so inclined, you could politely ask your local Honda dealer to leave its prominent aerodynamic aid off the specification list. If you’d opted for Nighthawk Black Pearl or Titan Silver Metallic rather than this car’s Vesuvio Red, it’d be in the running for one of the decade’s most anonymous-looking performance cars.

But nobody actually did that, right? It takes a certain kind of buyer to choose a family saloon with a set of Recaros and a red line at seven-five, and that buyer is probably going to leave the big carry-handle on the back right where it is, subtlety be damned. Along with the Escort Cosworth, there may not be another car whose wing-delete option was so roundly – and justifiably – ignored.

> Used Honda Civic Type R (FK2, 2015 - 2017) review – the forgotten hardcore Focus RS rival

Other things you’re liable to ignore in the Accord Type R include following traffic, whose presence the wing neatly obscures like a redaction line on a government document, and the consequential fuel bills from spending as much time as is reasonably achievable exploring the promised lands above 5800rpm. Ignoring your passenger occasionally grabbing for the door handle or one of the Recaro’s raised bolsters is, like the rear wing, entirely optional.

If today’s spectacular and smaller-winged ‘FL5’ Honda Civic Type R (get used to the chassis codes folks, this is a Honda story you’re reading and there’s more where that one came from) has only one real weakness, it’s that it feels more like a sports saloon than the more compact and rambunctious hot hatchbacks it competes against. Accord-sized, almost.

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Accord-sized exactly, as it turns out: at 4595mm long, the current Civic is to the millimetre the same length as Honda’s first four-door Type R. Today it makes the Civic feel a class size above most other hatches, though thanks to Honda’s obsession with mass, not a class above in weight. But back in the late 1990s, there were no preconceived notions about how big, or small, a Type R should be.

The UK had received the four-eyed DC2-generation Integra Type R barely a year earlier (it had been on sale in Japan since 1995) and as far as most people outside Japan knew – assuming they hadn’t grown up playing Gran Turismo – there was no such thing as a Civic Type R; the very first, EK9-chassis Civic R launched in its home market in August 1997, and the wildly successful ‘breadvan’ EP3 wouldn’t be arriving until 2001.

> Used Honda Civic Type R (FK8, 2017 - 2022) review – 169mph hot hatch bargain

The first Type R, incidentally, was the NSX-R, echoing BMW Motorsport GmbH, which first launched a supercar – the M1 – and then developed a range of other vehicles around its guiding philosophy. Yet while the R stands for racing, and the traditional combination of Championship White paintwork and red badges are a direct reference to Richie Ginther’s RA272, the 1.5-litre, V12-engined Formula 1 car that achieved Honda’s first Grand Prix victory in 1965, each Type R model is first and foremost a road car.

You could say that Honda has diverged from its chosen path far less than M has, given that the latter has thrown its badge on luxury GTs and plug-in hybrid SUVs and used it to flog bodykits, whereas the Japanese company hasn’t so much as created an ‘R-Line’ trim for unworthy superminis and crossovers to bask in its reflected glory. It’s probably lost out on a few yen by doing so, but the result is that even the least admired Type R models rigidly adhere to the tenets of the badge.

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Which brings us back around to the Accord Type R, whose defining characteristics, rear wing aside, match those of most of the maker’s back catalogue: a humble road car transformed into something profoundly more serious, without compromising on its fundamental usability (or, being a Honda, reliability). 

Rust protection, not so much. Our photographic car is owned by Honda UK and has recently been fully restored at no doubt excruciating cost. Honda acquired it a while back but, upon poking around underneath, discovered what so many other Accord Type R owners have, which is a car that can take its maker’s lightweight philosophy a mite too literally, by shedding as much steel as possible.

> McLaren-Honda MP4/5B: Anatomy of a V10 F1 champion

In this instance there’s not even the usual excuse that someone in Japan forgot to underseal the car before sticking it on a boat to saltier climes, because the CH1 Type R – in fact, the Accord sold in Europe between 1998 and 2003 in general – was both developed in Europe and built right here in the United Kingdom.

That made the Type R distinctly different from, albeit closely related to, the CL1 Accord Euro R launched in Japan two years later. This was Honda’s (indeed, Japan’s) phase of tailoring products specifically to the markets in which they were sold, with three notably different but mechanically related models sold globally, one for Europe, one for the Americas, Oceania and Southeast Asia, and another solely for Japan. Why the illogical Euro R naming for the Japan-only model? There seems to be no official explanation, but perhaps it’s acknowledgement that Europe applied the Type R treatment to the Accord even before Honda’s home-market boffins.

Engine, gearbox and technical highlights

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The Type R’s engine, though, was all Japanese, and all Honda. Designated H22A, the surprisingly under-square 2157cc four-cylinder first appeared in the Prelude coupe in 1993, already making a healthy 197bhp thanks to Honda’s VTEC technology.

It had racing heritage before getting anywhere near the motorsport-inspired Type R – destroked to 2 litres, it formed the basis of the engine in European Formula 3 and Honda’s BTCC Super Tourers. But as with the smaller ‘B’ engines in the Civic and Integra Rs, the Accord’s ‘H22A7’ got its own special treatment. Honda raised the compression ratio to 11.0:1 (from the Prelude’s 10.6:1) and added lower-friction pistons to a balanced rotating assembly, a large-diameter single-bore intake manifold rather than a dual-intake manifold (better for airflow at high revs), hand-finished ports, increased valve lift, and a 4-2-1 exhaust manifold that later splits into two pipes gain before it exits at the rear bumper.

The result was 209bhp at 7200rpm, and a more modest-sounding 158lb ft of torque only 500rpm earlier. From these figures it’s difficult to appreciate the area ‘under the curve’ compared with Honda’s even peakier engines – the 1.8-litre in the Integra Type R made its 131lb ft 100rpm higher than even the Accord’s lofty summit. Admittedly, it might also look more impressive had Japan’s Euro R (and its non-Type R Preludes) not then casually rolled out of the factory with 217bhp a few years later, suggesting the engineers had left something on the table to keep European noise and emissions legislators happy.

The H22A7 was bolted to a five-speed manual transmission – with special attention paid to the throw and action of the lever, in true Honda fashion – and a helical limited-slip differential, not unlike that on the Integra. The 215/45 ZR17 Bridgestone Potenza RE050s are wrapped around 7x17in split five-spoke cast alloy wheels, which look as tame as they now sound in a world where 19-inch forged items seem to be the bare minimum to qualify as a performance car. They’re made by Speedline though, adding to the motorsport cred invoked by the three-spoke Momo steering wheel (if it looks familiar, you might have driven a 550 Maranello recently) and Recaro seats (these shared with other icons including the Mitsubishi Evo VI and Phase 2 Renault Sport Clio V6).

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As ever, Honda’s attention to detail didn’t stop simply with throwing big-name parts at a standard Accord. Unspecified reinforcement beefed up the shell (already stiffer as a saloon than it would be as a hatchback), and the front double-wishbone and rear five-link suspension received new spring and damper rates and firmer bushes. The 300mm ventilated front discs were sourced from the parts bin, though for clarity I should point out that the bin was located at Honda’s Takanezawa plant in Tochigi, just around the corner from the Twin Ring Motegi circuit and best known for hand-building the NSX.

Funny, then, that despite knowing all this, my first interactions with the car seem so anticlimactic. It’s not a bad looking thing at all, but its humble beginnings aren’t nearly as well hidden as they have been in some Type R products. It’s not distinctly ‘Japanese’ in that intangible way you get with certain cars from the Far East, with slightly bulbous, clearly ’90s-European-inspired styling, despite the best efforts of the wing. And as with the contemporary Integra, the door swings open almost too easily with the pull of a light and slightly cheap-feeling handle. The excuse for the latter is probably weight-saving – the brochure quotes 1348kg, compared with the 1376kg of a 2.0 VTEC SE – but the unavoidable impression is of something slightly flaky.

That’s partly forgotten as I settle into the slightly green-tinted Recaro, still and forever one of the best seats ever fitted to a road car, and lay hands upon the Momo wheel and aluminium gearknob. As with the NSX, Integra and current Civic, Honda got these essential touch-points exactly right, just as they did the clear instrument graphics on off-white dials and, slightly raised seating position aside, your position in the car. Straight, wheel in the right place, pedals just-so, no distractions (ergonomic or from glaring information squares) from getting on with it.

Then, on twisting the key, the slight unease comes back. I’ve been misled by hot Hondas like this before, because to a car – new Civic included – they fire up with all the sense of occasion of finding a TV licence payment demand in your letterbox. You know it’ll change when the fluids are warm and the rev counter’s larger numbers start calling your name, but Honda’s ability to make machinery so mechanically laser-focused feel so pedestrian at lower speeds is surely unsurpassed.

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The slightly sticky low-revs throttle response on this car, presumably a hangover from the restoration, does little to raise the pulse, and the gearshift, while smooth in its action and notably sprung either side of centre, lacks the tight, mechanical feel found in modern Civics. The steering, though, instantly feels more responsive and talkative than that of any other Honda from the era.

A few hours of motorway separating pick-up point from photo location wouldn’t normally be the ideal environment for one of Honda��s thinly insulated Rs, but here’s where being based on a deeply sensible car like the Accord makes a lot of sense. There’s no great commotion and the stiff shell gives it the same kind of impregnable sense of quality you get from much newer cars, making your interaction with the flimsy door handle a qualitative red herring. The Accord is nowhere near as highly strung as an Integra either, despite gearing that puts you close to 4000rpm at the legal limit.

In this zone, the VTEC changeover point is still 1800 revs away, but it’s where the 2.2-litre begins to wake up, sounding and feeling less like a meek family saloon. Reviews from the period marvel at the engine’s torque, though this is to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt in a modern context. Not just because turbocharging has somewhat rewritten our internal code for low-down go, but also because those reviewers were comparing it directly to even less muscular VTEC engines, and the 2.2 might as well have been a V8 next to the Integra’s 1.8. Below maybe 4000, 4500rpm, it still feels slightly weak, like waking up to find that after eight hours in bed you can’t clench your fists. Basically, the Accord needs a bit of a stretch.

It never gets old, and it always comes as a surprise. Finally keep your toe down long enough to let that brilliantly simple VTEC mechanism do its thing – nothing more than oil pressure forcing a pin to lock two low-lift rockers to a third one following a high-lift cam lobe – and the change in intensity is spectacular. The only modern cars that feel quite so illicitly vocal at higher revs wear Lamborghini and Ferrari badges and have six or eight more cylinders.

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With little to really muffle what’s coming through the firewall, the new cam profile results in a sudden hammering induction note, as if someone has swapped in a set of individual throttle bodies while you’ve been distracted by the rev counter. They must have bolted in a lighter crank while they were in there too, as the engine doesn’t just increase in volume but also in its rate of revs, yowling in a flash from 5800rpm, past the 7200 power peak and beyond.

You get to do it all again in the next gear too, the shift itself beautifully precise but also much lighter than that of NSXs, S2000s and current Civics. The helical diff, meanwhile, suddenly asked to deal with what amounts to a completely different engine, does its best to divide its efforts between both front tyres, relayed as an insistent tugging at the wheel in the first couple of ratios. Call it another stretching session for the Accord’s other genial quality: the chassis. Honda’s heritage fleet car is slightly hamstrung by tyres that are getting old and seem disinclined to warm through and start delivering real grip, so while it initially turns in gamely, it then quickly scuds into understeer. I’m glad I persist, though, because finally the front begins to hook and it feels for all the world like its smaller Integra sibling.

> Used Honda Civic Type R (EP3, 2001 – 2005) review, specs and buying guide

Better, in some respects. The steering for one. It’s no quicker to turn in, no sharper, but there’s greater bandwidth to its messages, more feel more of the time. The saloon’s extra weight doesn’t seem to affect the way it changes direction though – you’d have to be on quite a tight road, or track, before you found a combination of corners that the Accord didn’t cut through just as easily as the coupe. Body roll looks more dramatic in photos than it seems from behind the wheel, too – photographer Aston Parrott was convinced it’d lift a wheel with enough commitment, but the wishbones/multi-link combo kept each tyre firmly in contact with the ground, pass after pass, whether I lifted mid-corner (result: not much, beyond a composed tightening of line) or jumped on the throttle (diff hooks, Momo shuffles, touring-car noises burst through the firewall).

Some performance cars reward you with the sensations of working them hard, but the Accord’s noise and pace and intensity almost feel like they’re there purely to entertain the driver, while the car itself treats any task you throw at it with the same nonchalance as a Jazz toddling to and fro on the school run. Like all the best Type Rs, the Accord’s rewards are out of all proportion to just how tame it feels when you first step inside and move off. If nothing else, that enormous wing is a reminder that even the most unassuming cars can spring a few surprises. 

What we said

Honda Accord Type R, ‘Arch Rivals’ (evo 012, October 1999)

‘You know the VTEC scenario. Average action up to about 5000rpm, then kapow! the bomb detonates. In the zone, the Type R’s 2.2-litre four doesn’t just haul harder than the other engines here, it does it with more “tingle” factored into the experience. Between 5800 and 7400rpm in second, third and fourth, the small hairs on the back of your neck wriggle every time. 

‘On these fast, sweeping but occasionally lumpy and camber-unfriendly roads, the degree of structural integrity these measures bring to the party is extraordinary. The Accord Type R is one of those rare cars that doesn’t have to sacrifice control for comfort: it has both. Its firmness keeps the Potenzas planted to the tarmac but doesn’t allow sharp inputs to upset the body’s composure. Very special indeed.’ 

Honda Accord Type R Specs