Honda CR-Z to make comeback

Honda’s been in the news a lot recently, as it approaches its Formula One comeback with McLaren at this weekend's Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park and gets closer to launching two of Japan’s hottest ever sports cars – the new NSX and Civic Type R — in the next several months.

And now comes news from inside Honda's R&D centre in Tochigi prefecture north of Tokyo that it will give the unloved CR-Z hybrid sports coupe a new lease on life in the form of an all-new, more focussed model in two years.

Honda America has been pleading for a gutsy, good-looking and reasonably priced coupe to bolster its brand image alongside the NSX supercar and Civic hot hatch, and a source with close ties to Honda says the next CR-Z will be the answer.

"Remember the CR-Z? It’s a coupe that has disappeared from Honda’s line-up in Europe and Australia, but it’s due to make a big comeback in 2017," he said.

"The two reasons that forced Honda to phase it out, namely its weak street cred and lack of performance thanks to its ho-hum hybrid power unit, have been readdressed.

"The new coupe will be a force to reckon with," insists our source.

The original model was based on a modified version of the Jazz’s platform, but unlike the Jazz, with its centrally located fuel tank, the CR-Z’s tank was repositioned at the rear.

To keep costs down, our source tells us that the new CR-Z's platform will be borrowed from the next-generation Civic but with a 100mm shorter wheelbase.

Expected to be marginally bigger than the outgoing CR-Z, the new model will borrow design hints from the NSX and Type R and pack a detuned version of the Type R's turbocharged four-cylinder V-TEC powerplant pumping out over 210kW.

In fact, it looks like the CR-Z will be positioned and marketed as a high-performance coupe version of the next-generation US-spec Civic, which means it may even be called the Civic CR-Z.

While the export version will be fitted with the 2.0-litre engine, Honda is planning to take its aging hybrid system to the next level for the Japanese domestic market by employing a turbocharged 1.5-litre hybrid i-DCD powertrain  generating upwards of 150kW and incorporating an eight-speed automatic transmission.

Expect to see a CR-Z prototype surface at the 2017 Detroit show, before sales start in early 2018.