The new hot Civic is angrier. Much angrier.
The 2017 Honda Civic Type R has finally been given its full unveiling, after suffering numerous visual leaks leading up to its announcement. The new Type R maintains a lot of the performance enhancements that we first saw in the outgoing model, though we’re told that these have all been retuned for a more “hardcore” experience behind the wheel.
The new Civic Type R was first previewed at the 2016 Paris motor show, and we did comment at the time that it looked production-ready. Honda clearly thought the same, with the overall appearance carried over wholesale (sans the gimmicky brushed paintwork). The front of the car looks especially menacing, with huge air intakes and a bonnet vent feeding the manic engine beneath. There’s also a neat front splitter too, in case you were too focused on the openings.
Massive front fender vents also serve to denote this as the Type R, along with expanded wheel arches, the requisite dinner-table wing, and a large rear diffuser replete with a tri-barrel exhaust. The wheels on the Type R have also been upsized, measuring 20-inches in diameter. The underbody also plays a critical role here, as all of the aerodynamic bits you can see work together with the smooth underbody to give it a more complete aero package, culminating in a better balance between lift and drag.
The engine under the bonnet is pretty familiar too, as the new Type R soldiers on with the 2.0-litre turbocharged VTEC four-pot from the last hot Civic, though it’s been revised slightly to produce 235kW & 400Nm. Also familiar is the six-speed manual transmission (with rev-matching) that we saw in the outgoing car, and power still goes to the front wheels. What has changed is the suspension at the rear, with the torsion-beam setup of the old car being binned in favour of an independent multi-link affair replete with unique suspension arms. MacPherson struts do their job up front, but come with new geometry that differs from the vanilla Civics.
The body of the Type R is stiffer, likely due to this hot variant being engineered into the Civic platform from the very start. As a result, torsional rigidity has been improved by as much as 38% according to Honda. It also means that the new Type R offers a ‘Comfort’ driving mode alongside the hotter Sport and +R driving modes that adapt suspension damping, steering force, gearshift feedback and throttle response to the selected mode.
The new Civic Type R will be built at the Honda Swindon plant in the United Kingdom, before going on sale in spring. Honda Australia has confirmed that the Civic Type R will hit Australian soil before 2017 is out, and it’ll be priced competitively against other performance family cars like the Ford Focus RS, Volkswagen Golf R, and its arch nemesis, the Subaru WRX STi.
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