New Honda Civic Type-R to target Focus RS

Honda is set to reveal its highly-touted new Civic Type-R at the Paris motor show next month, and the Japanese manufacturer has one culprit in its sights: Ford’s giant-killing Focus RS.

The Blue Oval hyper-hatch has been revealed as the major benchmark for Honda in developing its newest Type-R.

Speaking with journalists today, Honda Australia director Stephen Collins confirmed the next-generation model would be a rapid departure from the Type-R currently not offered in Australia.

“It will be quite a substantial change [from the current model],” he said. “We’re not in a position to go into details but performance-wise it will be outstanding.

"Last time we sold about 2000 Civic Type-Rs. We will bring the best Type-R to the market.

“We really think it will deliver on all the sporty attributes that Type-R is known for.”

Asked whether Honda had honed in on the Volkswagen Golf GTI as a performance benchmark, Honda Australia customer and communications general manager Scott McGregor said: “It’s more playing with Focus RS, that’s the area it plays in”.

With all the speculation pointing to a potent 220kW 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engines powering the new Civic Type-R, the key question is what transmission options it will be mated with.

Like the model it replaces, it is understood the new Type-R will retain front-drive underpinnings instead of a clever all-wheel drive set-up like the 257kW Focus RS.

“Our enthusiast base is crying out for a manual performance car and in that particular segment we believe that’s the configuration that’s going to work for us,” McGregor said.

“If you look and see what’s happening with Focus RS now, if we only brought an automatic in there could [be potential issues].

“We haven’t confirmed any specs or anything like that but that’s the discussion that’s going on.

Honda's outgoing Civic Type-R is fitted with a 228kW/400Nm 2.0-litre turbo-petrol four that powers it via a six-speed manual transmission to 100km/h in 5.7 seconds and a 270km/h top speed.

It claimed a series of front-drive production car lap records at Silverstone, Spa-Francorchamps, Hungaroring, Estoril and Monza, but its Renault Megane RS 275-beating Nurburgring record was beaten by Volkswagen's Golf GTI 40 Years edition.

Honda will no doubt be keen to rectify that with the new Type-R, which will be based on the latest Civic hatch revealed just last week and previously previewed by the Civic hatch concept (pictured).

Honda remains coy on exactly when the new Civic hatch and Type-R will join the latest Civic sedan Down Under, but expect mainstream models to arrive in the first quarter of next year and the hot hatch to follow in the second half of 2017.

"What we can say is that we’re trying to get it as soon as we can," said McGregor.