Honda Expands Civic Type R Family
What’s not to like?
It's been known for a while that Honda was planning on exploiting the Type R's reputation by introducing an expanded range, and now we have some of the detail. In the coming weeks, the new range will be landing in showrooms, so you won’t have long to wait if some of that money you've been saving during the lockdown is burning a hole in your pocket and you fancy a new hot hatch.
For as long as most of us can remember there's been Honda Civics, and then there was the Civic Type R. This hottest of hot hatches was always the pinnacle of the Civic lineup, and it was some achievement for it to take one of the world's best-selling but perhaps also most mundane family cars and turn it into something truly exciting and even exhilarating.
The Civic Type R tended to be something of a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, but that could have held it back a little lately as the styling of the latest model was polarizing, to say the least. That outrageous spoiler made it the thing of boy-racer dreams, but the styling could have put off more buyers than it attracted.
There will be an entry-level Civic Type R that will have a retail price in showrooms of £32,820, but there will also be GT and Sportline versions of the Type R that will set you back an additional £2000. If you want to go all the way for a full-fat, top-of-the-line Limited Edition Civic Type R, the price for one of those is set at £39,995.
As is the way of things these days, Honda will be using an attractive monthly PCP finance payment to try and attract those who would like a Type R but don’t have the cash to buy one outright. The headline payment for the basic model will be £339 a month over three years, but if you scroll down to the fine print you'll notice that to get that payment you'll have to stump up a not inconsiderable deposit of £8,520.50.
All versions will benefit from the addition of a revised air intake system, improved cooling, two-piece floating disc brakes for even greater performance, revised suspension geometry and bushings for a better ride and a few small cosmetic changes to both the interior and exterior.
GT models add the likes of blind-spot monitoring with cross-traffic monitor, dual-zone climate control, the Honda CONNECT infotainments system with Garmin Navigation, wireless charging, a high power audio system and LED front fog lights.
If you want the performance without the boy-racer styling associated with the recent Type R, the R Sport Line delivers the performance in a subtler shell with a low-level rear spoiler, an all-black interior, smaller 19-inch alloy wheels with a larger profile tyre, and no pin-striping around the lower flanks of the Honda.
On the other hand, if the current Civic doesn't look extreme enough for you, the Limited Edition will give you exactly what you’re looking for with a limited run of just 100 cars being produced in a unique "Sunlight Yellow" paint. Unfortunately, only 20 of them are coming to