What’s it like to live with the fastest front-drive sports car in the world? Glenn Butler spends a week in Honda’s Nurburgring king to find out.
2023 Honda Civic Type R
One of the first hot Hondas I ever drove was the 1992 Honda CR-X two-seat targa top, and it was a corker. Now, before you laugh at me, the CR-X may have been small in stature but it packed plenty of energy and enthusiasm.
That third-generation CR-X was a big departure from the previous two hatchback-based CR-Xs, but it retained key Honda performance hallmarks of the time: a free-revving VTEC four-cylinder engine in a lightweight body with sharp steering and an agile chassis.
This little car’s biggest problem was not performance but one of perception. It looked like a vacuous summer soft-top, which is why hot hatch aficionados fell out of love with it, leading Honda to axe it after just five years.
Luckily for us, Honda decided to have another go at hot hatches, again looking to the Civic for inspiration, but this time deciding to keep its sporty offshoot closer to its donor car physically and emotionally. This is why the Honda Civic Type R has survived 26 years and six generations… and is not just ‘still going strong’ today, but is a hot hatch apex predator.
How much does the Honda Civic Type R cost in Australia?
The 2023 Honda Civic Type R is far from an affordable hot hatch today; performance costs money, and you’ll need north of $72,000 to put one on the road. That means it is a $17,000 step up from the rest of the Civic range, but nobody is going to ‘step up’ into the Type R if they entered the Honda dealership looking at lesser variants.
The Honda Civic Type R is all about performance. Everything it has and everything it does is there to make it go around corners quicker than any other car for the money. It holds the lap record at the Nurburgring for front-drive hatchbacks.
That’s why you buy it.
It’s not intended as a commuter car, though you could drive it every day. We did, and we loved it.
The Civic Type R has a five-door hatchback body with seats inside for four. Obvious external styling highlights include a sports bodykit, rear spoiler and 19-inch alloys unique to the Type R shod with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S performance tyres.
Colour choices are limited to Red, White, Grey and Black.
Whichever paint colour you choose – and they’re all part of the standard price – the Type R’s alloys remain black and house bright red Brembo brake calipers.
The engine is a highly tuned 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol unit producing 235kW and 420Nm. Power is fed to the front wheels through a six-speed manual transmission with a mechanical limited-slip differential. A triple-tipped active exhaust system keeps the noise muted in everyday driving and cranks the volume when driven enthusiastically.
Adaptive dampers round out the major mechanical enhancements, and give the Civic Type R a breadth of dynamic capability beyond that of passively damped rivals.
Speaking of rivals, the Hyundai i30 N Premium ($49,200 plus ORCs) and Toyota GR Corolla GTS ($64,190 plus ORCs) come closest in performance. There are many other differences between the three, however, so buyers would be advised to research carefully before signing. And make sure you drive all three, if for no other reason than they’re all very capable, very exciting hot hatches, and test driving is fun!
| Key details | 2023 Honda Civic Type R |
| Price | $72,600 drive-away |
| Colour of test car | Rally Red |
| Options | None |
| Rivals | Toyota GR Corolla | Hyundai i30 N | Volkswagen Golf R |
How much space does the Honda Civic Type R have inside?
Never underestimate the importance of a sports car interior, because it is just as important to the experience as the ‘plating’ in a fancy restaurant.
Top chefs don’t just plop the ingredients together into a bowl and serve it up as slop. They painstakingly arrange all the ingredients so diners enjoy a visual feast to support the flavour, and also so the diner can consume those ingredients individually or in combination and savour every mouthful.
So, too, a sports car interior. The Civic Type R’s cabin is more than just a place to plonk four people to get them from A to B. It has to support the drama, both visually and integrally. Functionality with flair. After all, if you’ve spent $70K on a car capable of searing performance, you don’t want the utilitarian cabin of a Camry.
The Civic Type R’s cabin delivers, both in visual terms and as a driver’s cockpit.
Red is the theme du jour, from the seats and seatbelts to the carpeting below. The seats themselves are deep and supportive, and the driving position is spot on for me (175cm, 85kg). My taller colleague Tom Fraser would prefer more height in the steering wheel and a lower seat, but he grew up eating bean shoots so his head starts where mine ends.
The dashboard materials and layout marry nicely with the rest of the cabin, adding a technical flair with the requisite functionality. A central touchscreen does all the infotainment duties and gives access to Type R-specific information screens.
The second row is somewhat more spartan but still delivers visually. The back seat has the leg room and head room to accommodate adults, although taller occupants will rub the roof. There are no air vents back here or USB ports.
This cabin is a four-seater only, so there’s no centre rear seatbelt. Instead, the seat base has cupholders and a phone tray moulded in the middle. There’s no fold-down armrest, nor is there skiport access to the cargo area. The back seat does split-fold 60/40 for larger loads, expanding the boot from an already large 410L to 1212L.
As for a spare tyre under the boot floor, there isn’t one. Instead you get a can of goop and an inflator kit. If you’re lucky this will get you to a tyre repair joint. If not, call roadside assist.
| 2023 Honda Civic Type R | |
| Seats | Four |
| Boot volume | 410L seats up 1212L seats folded |
| Length | 4606mm |
| Width | 1890mm |
| Height | 1407mm |
| Wheelbase | 2735mm |
Does the Honda Civic Type R have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto?
The Civic Type R comes with a 9.0-inch infotainment touchscreen which, in typical Honda fashion, has big tile-based graphics for easy interaction. The graphics are of a high enough quality to suit the Type R’s desirability and give easy access to whichever subsystem you’re after.
The system itself has digital radio as well as AM and FM. It can also mirror Apple and Android smartphones or connect them into the Honda’s menu system via Bluetooth.
The system also includes Honda’s LogR track data logger that conveys cornering g-forces, oil pressure and temperature, vehicle location, and driver performance. It connects to a phone app so drivers can assess performance after the fact too.
The Type R has Honda Connect with functions like vehicle location, recent trip history, remote air conditioning, lights and door lock controls. Access to Honda Connect is complimentary for five years.
The 10.2-inch driver’s digital cluster is another sporty supporting act, and can be customised depending on your mood and preference. One example is the digital tacho that can display revs in the conventional dial layout or as bars. Whichever you use, the Type R also has shift lights to help you change gears at the optimal time.
Is the Honda Civic Type R a safe car?
The 2023 Honda Civic range has not been tested or rated by ANCAP, so we do not know how well its safety systems perform when needed.
This is not because ANCAP has chosen not to test the car, but rather that Honda has decided against providing cars for crash testing. Some manufacturers opt against ANCAP testing, and often due to cost.
The Civic Type R features front-, side- and full-length curtain side-impact airbags. It also gets new driver and passenger knee airbags.
| 2023 Honda Civic Type R | |
| Safety report | Untested |
What safety technology does the Honda Civic Type R have?
The Civic Type R has the Honda Sensing active safety package in addition to the airbags listed above. As standard, the Type R receives autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warning, lane-keep assist, traffic sign recognition, a reversing camera with front and rear parking sensors, and rear cross-traffic alert.
The lane-keep assist technology combines with the adaptive cruise control to assist during freeway driving and keep you within the lane markings, so long as the driver’s hands remain on the steering wheel. The adaptive cruise-control tune is conservative, keeping a sizeable distance to the vehicle in front. Because it is an adaptive system, it will speed up and slow down relative to the vehicle ahead.
The reversing camera’s picture quality is below par, but it is better than having nothing at all.
How much does the Honda Civic Type R cost to maintain?
Honda provides five years of warranty for the Civic Type R with an unlimited-kilometre stipulation. However, this isn’t the case for the Type R if used commercially (taxi, ride share, delivery, courier, etc), which has a 140,000km distance limit. Five years of premium roadside assistance is included as standard.
The new car purchase includes a five-year subscription to Honda Connect, which enables you to connect with your car through a phone-based application. Free map updates for five years are also included.
The warranty requires that the car be serviced every 12 months or 10,000km, whichever comes first.
Servicing will cost $199 for each of the first five visits. If you only do 10,000km per year then it’s $995 over five years. If, however, you do the national average of 11,500km per year, then be prepared to pay for service #6 in that time as well. The price for this is unknown, but is likely to be more than the $199 cap quoted for each of the first five services.
Even so, the Civic Type R’s servicing schedule is cheaper than the Hyundai i30 N ($1675 over five services) and the Volkswagen Golf R ($4056 over five services).
The Honda Civic Type R costs $2040 per year to insure based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male driver living in Chatswood, NSW. This is more than the VW Golf R ($1508) and the Hyundai i30 N ($1334). Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.
| At a glance | 2023 Honda Civic Type R |
| Warranty | Five years, unlimited km |
| Service intervals | 12 months or 10,000km |
| Servicing costs | $597 (3 years, 30,000km) $995 (5 years, 50,000km) |
Is the Honda Civic Type R fuel-efficient?
Honda suggests the new Civic Type R consumes fuel at a rate of 8.9 litres per 100 kilometres on a combined cycle. Our testing found it didn’t hit that figure exactly, instead returning an 11.0L/100km usage during our seven-day test, which includes freeways, back roads and racetracks.
The Civic Type R’s highly tuned 2.0-litre turbocharged engine requires 95-octane fuel to perform at its best.
Fuel Consumption – brought to you by bp
| Fuel Usage | Fuel Stats |
| Fuel cons. (claimed) | 8.9L/100km |
| Fuel cons. (on test) | 11.0L/100km |
| Fuel type | 95-octane premium unleaded |
| Fuel tank size | 47L |
What is the Honda Civic Type R like to drive?
Even before you start the engine, the Honda Civic Type R feels racy. The combination of deep and supportive sports bucket seats, Alcantara sports steering wheel and cool alloy shift knob makes every drive start in pole position.
That doesn’t mean you’ll blast out of the driveway at 6000rpm, front wheels screaming for grip. In fact, one of the Civic Type R’s main attractions is that it’s a very comfortable sports car to cruise around in and to commute in.
The engine is tractable and benign on low throttle – and surprisingly torquey down low given that it retains Honda’s rev-happy attitude as engine speed builds.
The Type R’s dual-mode dampers endow this hot hatch with an everyday ride quality that’s compliant enough not to make passengers whinge, and yet retains a tautness that advertises the vehicle’s inherent dynamism.
Put the car in +R mode and the steering gets meatier, the accelerator pedal goes on high alert, the dual-mode exhaust gets louder and the ride stiffens appreciably. This is when the Type R is at its best in all regards, giving the driver full access to its performance credentials and delighting the senses beyond any other hot hatch today.
Every control is transparent, from the steering to the pedals and the gear selector, and intimate in their relations with the driver. This is not a sports car that says ‘hold on and be amazed’, it’s a car that demands the driver’s intense involvement… and the payoff is worth it.
The Civic Type R may not be the fastest hot hatch from A to B at the price – the all-wheel-drive Golf R may have something to say there – but it is still a ridiculously quick and capable vehicle, and I’d argue that it immerses the driver in the action better than any other.
This is a car that makes good drivers better and makes great drivers grin. The Type R requires deft hands and sensitive feet to get the most out of its front-drive dynamics, because there is more than enough grunt to overpower front-end grip, even with the LSD doing everything to maximise traction. But if you’re attentive to what the car is feeding back, then it’s a delight to keep the Type R at the limits of performance.
In short, while an all-wheel-drive rival may eat up the road faster, it won’t be much faster and it won’t be as satisfying. After all is said and done, aren’t performance cars all about satisfying your passion?
| Key details | 2023 Honda Civic Type R |
| Engine | 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol |
| Power | 235kW @ 6500rpm |
| Torque | 420Nm @ 2600–4000rpm |
| Drive type | Front-wheel drive |
| Transmission | Six-speed manual |
| Power-to-weight ratio | 164.5kW/t |
| Weight (kerb) | 1429kg |
| Spare tyre type | Tyre repair kit |
Should I buy a Honda Civic Type R?
If you’ve got $73K to spend and want a hot hatch that’s as much about driver involvement as A-to-B pace, then the Honda Civic Type R should be at the top of your list. Nothing else will challenge you as much or reward you as richly.
That it’s also relatively painless to live with on a daily basis only makes it easier to justify owning.
How do I buy a Honda Civic Type R – next steps?
Stock shortages for this highly desirable car continue to be an issue at the time of writing. Honda’s website says the wait time on a new order placed today is seven months, and our comms with Honda’s PR team aligns with this. “The current ETA for a Civic Type R ordered today is May 2024,” our contact told us.
This is much better than the two-year wait for orders placed soon after the car’s launch. That said, Honda’s Civic Type R ‘build and price’ page currently quotes a 10-month wait (see disclaimer D71 in the fine print), so it’s always best to confirm with the dealer directly.
There’s always a chance you can find a near-new or demonstrator example in the classifieds but be prepared to pay over the odds even so. Check the Honda website for stock and here at Drive.com.au/cars-for-sale.
If you want to stay updated with everything that’s happened to this car since our review, you’ll find all the latest news here.
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