Honda Civic Type R for £5k off – save 10 per cent on the ultimate hot hatch

The end is near for the Honda Civic Type R with the Japanese marque waving off its seminal hot hatch with the Ultimate Edition, of which just ten will make it to the UK. But there’s not a lot that distinguishes that car to make it the Civic Type R to own, at least for those who are primarily interested in the driving experience, given there aren’t any hardware, performance or setup changes. So you don’t have to buy an Ultimate Edition to own one of the world's best hot hatches. More the better for those interested, because there are some great deals and discounts going around for brand new examples. Remember, this is a car whose only major flaw was wince-worthy pricing.

> Buy a Honda Civic Type R here

There are a few brand new cars available at dealers with four-figure discounts of between £2000 and £6000. The car we’ve found is available from DM Keith Honda in Grimsby with a £5010 discount, or just under a ten per cent discount compared to its RRP price of £52,605. That means you’ll pay £47,595 at most on a cash deal.

The dealer is also doing finance deals where it will contribute £1561 on top of a Honda deposit contribution of £2500 on new Civic Type R orders placed from now until 31 August. Clearly demand isn’t outstripping supply, even for a car that was already limited in terms of its availability in the UK.

Like the Toyota GR86 and GR Yaris, the FL5 Civic Type R was sold in the UK on a semi-limited basis with steady allocation supply, largely due to emissions and the looming penilisation big carmakers face for supplying even slightly unclean cars. While the emissions figure puts the Civic Type R in the painful £2190 first registration tax bracket in 2025, the limited numbers that Honda sold it in always informed the car’s quite sturdy list price, of £47k at launch in 2023. This in turn put some buyers off, with many wondering exactly what could make a Honda Civic be worth nearly as much as an Alpine A110 or Porsche Cayman. That was until they drove one. 

It’s not an understatement to say the FL5 Civic Type R is probably one of the greatest hot hatches, if not ever then certainly of the past 25 years. It has the intensity of its predecessors, with added control and configurability in the driving modes. The result is you can have the engine and steering at their angriest and tautest, with the damping wound back for greater compliance on UK roads. 

That’s not to say it’s soft. There’s still razor-sharp response and an eagerness to the Civic, as if it’s impatient to reach the corner that’s three turns ahead of you.

That engine is a tonic too – it’s not fizzing with the character and motorsport-spec redline of the old naturally aspirated engines but has a savagery and a hunger for revs that’s addictive. You direct it with nothing short of one of the best manual transmissions in terms of shift feel, in all of modern motoring. Only the Mazda MX-5 and Porsche 911 GT3 come close. All told, it’s a proper Type R, in that it has you treating every drive like you’re on your last ever litre of fuel. The added bonus is it’s nowhere near as offensive to look at on the outside as its FK8 Civic Type R predecessor and a much plusher, nicer place to be on the inside.

While this new car isn’t miles off what a new Golf GTI Clubsport would set you back, £47k is still pretty steep for a front-driven hot hatch, which does bring the old FK8 back into play as a prospect. What certainly isn’t half the car can be had for half that money. Either way, we’d recommend Civic Type R ownership to anyone, even if only for a short stint.