Honda Civic Type R Ultimate Edition waves off our favourite hot hatch
Honda is retiring the Civic Type R, signalling the death of one of the best hot hatches of all time
The Honda Civic Type R is not long for this world, with Honda announcing an ‘Ultimate Edition’ to wave off the seminal hot hatch from European and UK markets.
The Ultimate Edition is limited to just 40 units, with ten earmarked for UK shores. Not to be confused with the FK8 Limited Edition, the FL5 Ultimate Edition does not sport any mechanical or dynamic upgrades.
All will be Championship white, wearing bespoke red decals on the bonnet and down the sides. The roof is painted black while the wing is carbonfibre. The carbon carries on inside with the centre console, contrasting with the trademark bright red seats. It also gets a numbered gift box, a carbon key ring and a custom car cover and floor mats.
Why is the Civic Type R bowing out? As much should be obvious. That car and these inclement market conditions are about as square peg and round hole as it gets. It’s expensive for what it is, certainly in the eyes of many mainstream buyers and so sells in very limited numbers to those who get it. And when they do sell, their buyers are lumped with a CO2-related £2190 first registration cost. The Type R doesn’t do Honda any favours regarding the ZEV mandate, either, which requires a certain percentage of its sales to be EVs.
Hannah Swift, Head of European strategy and product, summed it up: ‘The industry is changing, and our model range is having to evolve with it in accordance with European legislation.’
We should probably be thankful that we got this generation of Type R at all. Such exercises of engineering fetishism don’t often get past the bean counters and sales numbers were never set to be spectacular with a price tag in the region of £50k.
Yet as we’ve found, the Civic delivers a driving experience that runs a 911 GT3 close for involvement, and feels worth every penny. That it won’t survive to its 30th birthday (and the hypothetical all-singing all-dancing hopped-up celebratory model that ought to have entailed) is a real shame.
> Ford Focus ST Track Pack v Honda Civic Type R: sharpened Focus tackles the hot hatch king
‘With single steering inputs you carve neatly through the turns, while adding to the sense of precision and calm is the chassis, rotating the car just so and filtering out noise from the road surface,’ wrote evo’s co-founder and editor-at-large Richard Meaden.
‘There’s a rare and wonderful quality to its dynamics, a clean, effortless precision that genuinely does bring to mind the 911 GT3.’
