Honda Civic Type R 2007 Review

Atmospheric Pressures

The hot hatch has always exemplified the variety of nations. The traditional French recipe is to build them thin and light, with a devil-may-care attitude to passive rear-wheel steer. Germans like to build them solid, and Italians to provide a scene-stealing engine and performance. The Japanese, as you might expect, major on technology, and the previous Honda Civic Type R summed this up nicely.

Although never sold here, the widely revered Civic Type R was born from a potent mix of circuit, street and virtual racing, a genre-defining 147kW engine using Honda's VTEC variable valve timing system, and the use of independent suspension. If it didn't work around Suzuka, you got the impression it didn't deserve to be on the car.

Honda has now decided to test the water in Australia with its Euro-spec Civic, kicking off with this new Type R. Unfortunately for Honda, the current hot-hatch party has been raging for a while now, and is stuffed with contenders from virtually every major player. In the face of this, Honda has found an extra 0.75kW under the bonnet over the old model, and traded independent rear suspension for a less sophisticated torsion beam in the name of packaging and, no doubt, cost. Not the most promising of starts, then. But the truth isn't quite so straightforward. Honda's brief with this Type R was to retain the raw thrills of old, while making the new car easier to live with.

Nevertheless, the overall experience is still centred on a blaze of revs and lightning-fast gearchanges. That, says Honda, is the reason why there's been little change in the drivetrain spec of the Type R.

We're told big turbocharged power outputs muffle the Zen-like pursuit of handling purity, and familiarity with the likes of the HSV VXR and Mazda 3 MPS suggests there's more than a little truth to what they say. So, what Honda has done is broaden the effectiveness of the motor, with a wider band of VTEC thrills (now stretching from 5400 to over 8000rpm) and a less pronounced step during the changeover of the cam profiles. This has been achieved by tweaking the ECU, giving the high-speed cams a more aggressive profile and smoothing the cylinder-head intake ports. The air intake manifold now has an airflow resonator to optimise the charge for torque, there's an electronic throttle and a lightweight flywheel, and a new balancer unit helps ease the vibrations inherent in a four-cylinder engine.

An impressive-sounding 90 percent of peak torque is available at just 2500rpm, but then that peak is only 192Nm at a sky-high 5600rpm. In comparison, a Focus XR5 cranks out a mighty 320Nm from down in its boots. Drive is fed through a close-ratio, six-speed gearbox, with the final drive lowered to combat the 134kg increase in kerbweight, much as Renault did with the Clio 197.

For the Type R's bodyshell, Honda has strengthened the cross member across the floor and the one at the bottom of the engine bay, and reinforced the area around the front suspension turrets. The car sits 15mm lower on its suspension than a regular Civic hatch, with a 20mm wider track. The springs and dampers have been retuned, too.

There's real joy in conducting a naturally aspirated engine of this quality. Where other performance engines strain and grit their teeth during the struggle to provide maximum performance, the Honda motor actually feels happiest when you're driving the trousers off it. Below the cam changeover, it sounds as thin as ever, but open it up and it will sing all day long in the thick of its broad powerband, with a deliciously pure bark that makes it sound like a genuine Super Tourer of the late '90s.

Honda's problem is the increasing weight of cars in this segment, a phenomenon that leads the Type R to weigh in at 1338kg. Weight needs torque to get it moving -- a commodity in short supply in the Civic. There's pulling power available at lower revs, but it's no fireball. Our 0-60mph (0-97km/h) time of 7.4 seconds should be viewed in the context of the wet track on which it was recorded, but the 6.6sec time quoted by Honda belies the feel of the car. Unless you're right at the top of the rev range, it simply never feels that quick. Take the 50-70mph (80-112km/h) increment in fourth gear as an example. In a Focus XR5, you'll dispatch it in 4.0sec; in the Honda it takes 5.3sec, so you'll need to shift rapidly to third in search of a 3.7sec time to stay with the Ford.

In some ways, Honda has been its own worst enemy in trying to smooth the engine's power delivery. Now that the exaggerated sensation of the 2.0-litre four coming on cam has been diminished, the excitement of accessing the promised land felt in the old car is less.

Essentially, how you feel about this engine comes down to personal choice. Some drivers will definitely relish the sound and furious action of driving this car flat-out, and will be prepared to overlook the lack of torque and the problems associated with it for those reasons. The razor-sharp throttle response, for example, will continue to appeal to any enthusiastic driver. But at the same time, others could find the dearth of low-down shove a frustrating experience.

What won't be up for debate is the quality of the gearchange, with a fabulous flick of the wrist connecting each ratio. With 300mm ventilated discs on the front wheels, and sizeable 260mm solid items at the rear, you'd expect the Type R to stop convincingly, and it does. Better still, there's a well-judged feel to the pedal underfoot that aides heel-and-toe changes -- a rarity even on a hot hatch.

The Type R's steering is well weighted and engaging in its responses, and there's a consistency to its action across the locks, even if, like most electric systems, it's short on genuine feel. This is a more habitable breed of Type R, just as Honda promised, with notable compliance in the way it rides at low speeds around town. You still feel the bumps, but there's enough elasticity that they rarely thump too harshly into the cabin.

Although this ability continues as speeds rise, there's quite a lot of body movement that goes unchecked, as if the springs and dampers aren't quite working in tune with each other. It's not a huge annoyance, but it doesn't sit right with the Type R's hardcore image, which you expect to provide an uncompromising experience. Indeed, the first car that we tried had a stiffer set-up, but Honda insisted the softer sequel was a true production spec.

To state that the Civic lacks the chassis sophistication you'll find in rivals like the Focus XR5 and Golf GTI, is also to express what we've feared all along: the switch to a torsion-beam rear end has had a detrimental effect. Larger intrusions tend to shudder crudely through the cabin, rather than be parried by the individual wheel, and there's a one-dimensional feel to the driving sensation.

Driving the Civic Type R quickly is more  about extending the rev range of the engine than it is of delicately scything a sequence of curves into little pieces, and it's the ability to do just that separates a great hot hatch from a merely good one.