Saying goodbye to the Honda Civic Type R – car pictures of the week
Possibly the best hot hatch ever made is now dead. We say an emotional goodbye with an epic drive
It’s been a long love affair we’ve had with Honda’s Civic Type R. Ten years on from its return, it departs UK dealers and does so after a years-long reign as the very best new hot hatch money could buy. In fact, it’s right up there as one of the best hot hatchbacks of all time. To mark the towering achievement of a driver’s car that it is, we had to take one of the ten Ultimate Edition cars coming to the UK, for a proper drive on some of our country’s best roads. These are our favourite shots.
The Type R was first reintroduced in 2015. Its turbocharged VTEC engine had Honda diehards questioning its authenticity but we found a motor that was every bit as furious as the old rev-hungry lumps, with a belly of torque to enjoy and a Porsche-beating manual gearshift to conduct it all with.
The FK2’s chassis was a bit too fighty on the road, but the FK8 of 2017 onwards almost perfected the Formula. It was more surefooted and controlled, with better steering – a proper, pucker, grown-up version compared to before. The FL5 then arrived to actually perfect it, being among other things much better looking and much nicer inside. It also added mix-and-matchable dynamics with an ‘Individual’ mode, finally letting you combine maximum ‘+R’ mode aggression in the powertrain and steering with a slackened-off ‘Sport’ chassis to broaden its capability on rougher roads.
If it’s not the best, the FL5 is one of the all-time greats. Surely, in the top five. Now there’s an idea for a test…
‘Everything feels like it has had immense time lavished on it. The gearshift and brakes are also the absolute gold standard for effectiveness, tactility and precision. Clearly Honda felt that if sticking with a manual gearbox was a celebration of the pleasure to be had from human-machine interaction, then the shift quality had to be an exemplar.
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‘Squeeze into the brakes and you are immediately treated to the firmest and most feelsome of middle pedals. Close your eyes and it could very easily be the work of Andy Preuninger’s team at Weissach-Flacht, such is the accuracy and consistency with which you can apply force and judge your braking efforts.
‘It’s this meticulously metered delivery and the equal emphasis on outright performance and engrossing engagement that ensured the CTR could outpoint its rivals; that sense of direct, proportionate response coupled to uncanny connection from all the major controls counting for more, more of the time. It’s a lesson in execution, but also in the importance of an overarching philosophy that informs every aspect of the car.’ – Richard Meaden, evo editor-at-large.
