Honda Civic Type-R

The interior cabin of the Honda Civic Type-R shares its complete layout with its sedan counterpart, however, to make it feel sporty and more special, Honda has made slight changes like a completely all-black cabin and red accents on the dashboard, steering wheel and door panels, and most importantly, all new race-oriented front bucket seats.

Apart from that, everything is shared with the sedan, like the multifunctional steering wheel, partitioned digital instrument console, centre console slightly tilted towards the driver with a large touchscreen infotainment system, and a panel for automatic climate control below it. The transmission tunnel here at the bottom gets a nice looking faux aluminium finish for the gear lever and cool looking piano black finish around it.

The list of features too has been shared with the Civic sedan here, however, the rear seat space isn’t given too much priority here, with too much focus on the front seats itself, given its driver-oriented image.

Honda has wonderfully transformed the suave and elegant looking Civic sedan into an altogether different sporty-looking hatchback which looks racy from the word go. The overall styling puts it in the category of super hatchbacks and has got its styling completely spot-on.

The front fascia of the Honda Civic Type-R shares its full-LED headlamps which make way for the sleek and wide looking front grille. However, here in the Civic Type-R, the wide grille is finished completely in black rather than chrome and gets a  noteworthy Type-R badge in its right side corner. The front bumper here is all-new super aggressive looking fog lamp housings and a large air dam in the middle, below which there sits a thin chin spoiler with red garnish.

The Honda Civic Type-R comes with a completely redesigned side profile over its sedan counterpart, with the only components shared being the side door. The front fender comes with a sleek air vent just adjacent to the front door. The alloy wheels are all new and are bigger and much sportier-looking compared to that of the sedan.

The rear profile of the Honda Civic Type-R looks very outlandish, and apart from the boomerang-shaped LED tail lamps, shares nothing with the sedan. The steeply raked rear windscreen gets sporty looking head inlets at the top and a massive boot lid spoiler at the bottom of the windscreen on the boot lid. The boot lid again features an integrated spoiler and an LED stop lamp in the middle. The rear bumper again comes with an aggressive-looking design for the diffusers, with air vents on either sides and a wonderful looking cluster of three round exhaust outlets in the centre.

The Honda Civic Type-R gets a stiffer setup for the Macpherson struts at the front and independent multi links at the rear, both of which get an active damper system. The perfectly weighted steering along with the specially tuned suspension and powerful Brembo disc brakes make for a great driving setup.

The Honda Civic Type-R has got a punchy 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, which currently serves as the most powerful petrol engine Honda has ever made. The engine makes 310 PS of power and 400 Nm of torque, and is paired to a 6-speed automatic gearbox as standard.

The Honda Civic Type-R is kitted with some really nice safety features like front, side, and curtain airbags, ABS with EBD, front and rear parking sensors with multi-angle rearview camera, adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, lane departure warning, road departure mitigation, safety brake hold, electronic parking brake, agile handle assist, hill start assist and vehicle stability assist.

With oodles of sportiness in every aspect of it, whether be its styling, engine, and driving dynamics, the Honda Civic Type-R gives a tough fight to supercars positioned much above it in terms of packaging, visual appeal, and character.