Honda Civic Type R 2021 Review

Forget about the $400K mid-engined Honda NSX; the car that delivers hope to Honda enthusiasts is the Honda Civic Type R.

Once heralded as Japan’s BMW, Honda’s fall from the pinnacle of Eastern brands has been much lamented. It largely now fills its showrooms with adequate rather than aspirational models.

The Civic Type R is the one affordable exception.

Released in its latest guise in 2017, it quickly won praise among hot hatch fans. Its general excellence flew in the face of the rest of the offering from Honda Down Under.

When the midlife update beckoned you could have been forgiven for thinking there would be little cause for renewed excitement for Type R fans.

We understood the changes would be very subtle – from the outside looking in, once over lightly.

And to be frank they looked that way on paper. But the good news is, although relatively small in number and subtle in specification change, the end result is positive and palpable.

For 2021, the Honda Civic Type R arrives as a significantly more refined, better and ultimately faster hot hatch.

Officially a 20MY model (that was launched in Japan way back in January), the single specification Honda Civic Type R that will be sold in Australia in 2021 is priced from $54,990 plus on-road costs. That’s an increase of $3000 over the car it replaces.

There are many relatively subtle changes including upgrades to ride and handling, engine cooling, plus a “freshened” exterior and modest but worthwhile interior upgrades.

As well as the evolutionary changes to the new Civic Type R (see more below) there are also some additions to the car’s kit.

The 2021 Honda Civic Type R gets lighter two-piece non-drilled front brakes, and the trademark triple exhaust is augmented with Active Sound Control (ASC). Track day regulars will like the LogR data-logging program that’s incorporated into the new touch-screen infotainment unit. The software is a first for Honda and exclusive to the Civic Type R.

There are few other boxes for Type R buyers to tick at the dealership, save for some carbon dress-up bits and lighter forged wheels. That said, the Racing (or Boost) Blue that’s new for 2021, worn by our test car and also to feature on Honda’s local TCR racers, is an additional cost.

There is one other Type R variant sold Down Under but it’s also somewhat of a moot point. Just 19 of the 1020 Honda Civic Type R Limited Editions produced globally were offered to Aussies earlier in 2020 at an asking price of $70,000 drive-away.

Honda Australia used a randomised lottery system to pick the successful buyers and that ran from October 1-31. And yes, with 400 responses, they’re all gone.

The Civic Type R is covered by a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty. Service intervals are capped at 12 months or 10,000km, whichever occurs sooner.

The 2021 Honda Civic Type R may be aimed at the racetrack but like most of the rest of the hot hatch gang, it’s a road car first, and as such gets the full complement of safety equipment.

Top of the list is the Honda Sensing suite of driver aids that includes everything from adaptive cruise control and lane departure mitigation, through to auto-dipping headlights and autonomous emergency braking (AEB).

The Civic range gets a handy brake hold function that is retained in the Type R. Just a little thing like this makes driving the manual-only Type R in heavy traffic all the more seamless.

In terms of connective tech, the new Type R picks up Honda’s revised 7.0-inch Advanced Display Audio touch-screen. There’s revised functionality and both audio volume and controls like fan speed are back to being hard buttons – as they should be…

Tech heads and regular track day drivers will enjoy the new integrated Honda LogR data-logging system.

This has three main modes: a performance monitor and log mode for racetrack driving analysis, and an auto score ‘gamification’ mode that Honda says “encourages smooth day-to-day driving”.

We sidestepped the score system but dug into the data-logging which provides quite comprehensive data of racetrack laps. Indeed, it’s the sort of functionality that just a few years ago required the purchase of an expensive data-logger plus a laptop to interrogate it on.

A wide range of parameters are logged including gear position, throttle and brake pressure as well as lateral and longitudinal G, speed, steering angle and the like. These can be selected and examined via a smartphone app available for both iOS and Android phones.

In the 2021 Honda Civic Type R, Honda LogR is far from a gimmick – although it helps to have a skilled data analyst to interrogate what you are doing wrong and right during your laps.

In the case of the Phillip Island launch day, those smarts were provided by Dean Sammut from Evolve driver training. Every keen Type R driver should use the technology to their benefit and do a course with Dean and learn from their data – there’s nowhere to hide but it will make you a better driver.

The Honda logging system at first flush looks easily a match for the smartphone system Porsche is offering to its high-end 911 customers.

There are other parallels between the Type R and top-end Euro machinery which I’ll mention later.

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Under the bonnet few hard parts have changed in the 2021 Honda Civic Type R, but plenty have been tweaked.

The 2.0-litre 228kW VTEC Turbo engine still produces peak power at 6500rpm and 400Nm of torque from 2500-4500rpm.

It’s an impressively muscular engine, even from very low revs, and yet happily buzzes into the rev limiter if you’re tardy with a gear change.

It’s very un-turbo-like except for its prodigious torque.

That thoroughbred four-cylinder powerplant is augmented by the new Active Sound Control system.

Honda says this “works to enhance the engine sound during aggressive driving in Sport and +R modes, while refining it further in Comfort mode”. As hopefully you’ll hear in our video, the Type R sounds great.

Among the detail changes to the 2021 Honda Civic Type R is a larger radiator and bigger grille opening. Both these changes are to ensure the engine can stay cooler and produce its impressive numbers even in high ambient temperatures.

We flogged our Type R around Phillip Island on a 33-degree-plus day with not a hint of performance drop-off or heat stress – at least from the car.

Very, very few street cars can manage this sort of harsh treatment and then back up for the homeward leg without an ounce of protest from the powertrain or brakes.

Even the tyres looked relatively fresh after dozens of sub-2:00min laps with yours truly and a certain Tony D’Alberto at the wheel of carsales’ allocated Type R.

I’ve only experienced this sort of durability in two other brands at Phillip Island – Porsche and BMW M. Even some AMGs struggle. Hence my remark above.

Thank goodness, too, that Honda has resisted the temptation to widen the appeal of the Type R by adding an auto gearbox. The Civic hot hatch remains steadfastly manual-only, and the six-speeder is a cracker.

A demonstration of the detail the Type R engineers have gone to in this update is the new gear lever. It’s better shaped (from ball to teardrop), counterweighted and it elevates an already good shift to precision rifle-bolt territory.

You soon find you’re changing gears just for the tactility of the shift. Auto rev-matching is a boon too – but yes, you can still switch it off if you must.

Much of the development pie has been allocated to chassis in the 2021 Honda Civic Type R.

Key to the changes is a faster ‘brain’ for the adaptive dampers which now evaluates road conditions 10 times faster (now 20 per second). This, Honda says, results “in improved damper reactions for better handling response and ride quality”.

The change is immediately apparent in the most road-orientated of the three driver select mode settings: Comfort.

There’s less pitching fore and aft, and the head ‘nodding’ that plagued the previous model in Comfort is gone. This transforms the Type R to a more liveable daily driver.

Other changes assist both this and the car’s ability in even the sportiest conditions. Bushes front and rear have been stiffened for better alignment and wheel control, and new lower-friction front ball joints deliver more accurate steering response and feel.

There’s new lighter, floating front discs that are ventilated but no longer slotted or drilled for more pad-to-disc contact and improved performance. Even the pedal stroke has been modified – it’s now shorter (15mm, which is a lot!) to deliver a higher, more secure pedal feel “during high intensity driving”.

The end result of all of this is a car that is better on both road and track. That’s not an easy tightrope to walk initially. Harder still to improve as a model matures…

Inside, there is one other driver-oriented change which is worth mentioning. Honda has changed the steering wheel material from leather to Alcantara which is a positive in my mind.

Thankfully they’ve resisted the temptation to oversize the rim. The precision feel of the Type R’s front-end is all the better for this.

It’s worth mentioning here also that the Type R retains all of the amenity of its Civic donor vehicle. Five-door versatility, decent room (including headroom) in both rows and little if any compromise for the Type R’s performance potential – save for some concern for the liquorice-strip 20-inch tyres which are chronically ‘allergic’ to potholes.

If you’re getting the idea that we like the changes made to the 2021 Honda Civic Type R, then go to the top of the class.

Balancing the real-world and racetrack needs in any vehicle is a challenge. Doing so on a budget using a mass-market platform is all the more difficult.

The Type R was good to start with, but with the latest round of evolutionary changes, it’s gone from good to great.

At a track like Phillip Island, it is a genuine giant killer. Faster cars on paper will have their hands full matching a handy driver in a Type R, particularly over multiple laps.

There’s prodigious mid-corner grip and this front-drive hatch gets into and out of corners with an absolute minimum of understeer.

You can thank the clever mechanical differential as part of the equation, but the fact is, overall, it’s an incredibly well-balanced car.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need a decent driver to extract the best from it. But isn’t that the point of performance cars? Part of the reward is optimising your technique to suit and get the best out of your chosen weapon.

That the 2021 Honda Civic Type R is also better day-to-day in the real world is all the more reason to recommend it.

The Civic Type R is the sort of car that built Honda’s reputation. It’s a crying shame that the qualities reflected in this vehicle aren’t more obvious in other Honda models.

Personally, I’m a fan of hot hatches. The very best of them are at least two cars in one. And the latest Civic Type R is one of the very best.

How much does the 2021 Honda Civic Type R cost?
Price: $54,990 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 228kW/400Nm
Transmission: Six-speed manual
Fuel: 8.8L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 200g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: Not tested

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