Meet the all-new FL5 generation 2023 Honda Civic Type R, which has now officially landed on UK soil. As a front-wheel-drive, turbocharged, five-door hatchback it sits in familiar territory as far as more recent Type Rs go – yet it also represents something increasingly rare in the world of very fast hatchbacks. And that’s because it doesn’t offer all-wheel drive.
Ah, you might say, but nor does a Hyundai i30N, or a Ford Focus ST, or the Volkswagen Golf GTI. And in one sense you’d be quite right, because each of these hot hatches also sends its power to the road via the front wheels only. However, the Civic Type R has long since moved on from being a mere hot hatch.
Instead, Honda has its target firmly set on the ‘super-hatch’ class where it’ll do battle with the Volkswagen Golf R, BMW M135i, Audi S3 and Mercedes-AMG A35. This much is clear both from the car’s power output, which now sits at 325bhp, but also its price. Which is – and you might want to sit down here – £46,995. Of the quoted rivals, only the Mercedes gets close to that as far as starting price is concerned.
Power and Performance
There is more to be said about that price (primarily “seriously?”), but for now let’s just observe that if you’re spending the best part of £50,000 on a front-wheel-drive car, even a high performance one, you should expect something special. The engine is always a good place to start with a Honda Type R. It’s a four-cylinder petrol unit, with one turbocharger and no hybrid assistance. Old school, you could say, and even more notable given the standard version of the latest Civic has moved to a hybrid-only powertrain.
It's the same powertrain as the previous FK8 Type R, albeit with many aspects meticulously refined. Take the turbocharger, for instance. Rather than source a new one, Honda has concentrated on optimising what it already had, tweaking the turbo’s internals for a 14% reduction in inertia and a 3% improvement in efficiency. It’s the same story with the intake and exhaust systems, the intercooler, the flywheel (18% lighter than before), and the ECU. We wouldn’t be surprised if Honda said it had optimised the oil filler cap.
The result of all these hundreds of hours of work is, on paper at least, moderately underwhelming: 325bhp and 310lb ft in the new car plays 316bhp in and 295lb ft in its predecessor. The 0-62mph time drops from the FK8’s 5.8 seconds, to 5.4 seconds in the FL5. The top speed is 170mph versus its predecessor’s 169mph. These are not the quantum leaps you might expect, and certainly not sufficient to give the car’s intended rivals much to worry about on paper.
It's All in the Details
You can apply that same analysis to so much of the FL5. Its wheelbase is 35mm longer, the driver’s hip point 8mm lower. The car’s front track is 26mm wider (30mm for the rear), and the front tyres are wider too, but wrapped around alloy wheels that are 19 inches for the new car versus 20 for the outgoing model.
Naturally, Honda has not looked at components in isolation, but also how they all interact with each other. And it can back it all up with data, whether it’s the stuff that’s easier to measure, like how the car’s various aero results in an extra 90kg of downforce at 124mph, or the trickier details, like how moving the brake cooling intakes to a more central position on the front bumper reduces the temperature of the front brake pads when the car is driven on circuit, leading to more consistent performance from the Brembo-supplied system.
Styling and Interior
The point is, in most meaningful ways, the new Civic Type R is a car that is very much about the small details. Unless, that is, you want to talk about the design. Because the way this car is styled is very different to the approach taken with the FK8. For while from the outside it might still look like a touring car that took a wrong turn when leaving the pit lane, this is still a much more subtle interpretation of a fast Civic. Not as restrained as much earlier iterations of Civic Type R, such as the EP3 and FN2, but the aggression has certainly been taken down a notch or two from the FK8. Of course, what remains, like the prominent rear wing that sits atop the new resign tailgate (20% lighter, naturally) as the car’s most obvious aerodynamic device, plus the bodywork’s abundance of vents and ducts, all serves a purpose. It’s just a bit less shouty about it.
The other area where progress can be measured in leaps rather than in lap times, is the interior. The new Civic has a terrific cabin, retaining the practicality of the previous generation (this is a proper family car with room for four tall people to travel in comfort, and a huge 410-litre boot) but upgrading everything from ergonomics to material quality, and from technology to user-friendliness. The Type R ups the want factor with various sporty touches such as fabulous, figure-hugging sports seats, and a brushed metal gear-lever, as it always has. The difference this time is that these items now sit in what was already a fundamentally much better interior to begin with.
The infotainment system is leaps and bounds ahead of the lacklustre offering in the previous model, and while it’s hard to imagine many owners making use of the Honda LogR data logger that shows a G-meter and tyre friction info, an easy-to-operate satnav, Apple CarPlay and wireless phone charging are all welcome.
Road Driving
Honda laid on an FK8 to drive back-to-back with the new FL5, which might have been risky. You see, for all its wild looks, the FK8 sits right up there as one of the greatest front-wheel-drive hot hatches ever made. It’s a sublime driver’s car on both road and track, and not a machine that leaves you wishing for more of, well, anything really.
But then you drive the FL5 and you realise that yes, there was room for improvement. Perhaps the FK8 wasn’t quite as stiff as it could have been. Perhaps the shift action of the six-speed manual gearbox could be made even more fabulous still. Perhaps the engine could pull a little harder, and perhaps there could be even more feel through the steering wheel. The FL5 is all that and more. It’s wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful.
On the road you can dial the driving mode down to its Comfort setting, at which point the adaptive dampers (yes, they’ve been evolved from the FK8’s) soften enough to give a ride that is quite easily compliant enough to make this a viable daily driver. The engine can be docile and obliging at low to medium revs, the brakes are strong and predictable, and the gear-lever moves with an easy precision. Honda has long been a master of the manual gearbox, marrying perfect weight with a short, satisfying throw, ultra-positive engagement and a beautifully matched clutch action. The FL5’s manual transmission is Honda’s best yet, and surely up there with the greatest manual gearboxes there have ever been. The optimised rev matching functionality is a treat too, and will flatter even the clumsiest of shifts.
Up the pace, and move into Sport mode (accessed not via a menu buried in a touchscreen but using a physical toggle switch by the gear-lever, where you’d expect to find it) and you might imagine traction could be an issue, what with 310lb ft of torque flooding through the front wheels from 2,200rpm. Truth is, dual-axis front suspension systems and limited-slip differentials such as the ones in the Type R are so good these days that for 95% of the time you can get the power down cleanly and efficiently and with barely a trace of torque steer. That includes when the road is wet, with the Civic‘s Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres biting into the road surface even under hard, second gear acceleration as you come through a sweeping bend.
Track Driving
We later tried the Civic on a sopping wet Thruxton circuit (the fastest track in the UK, gulp), with the driver mode in its fiercest Type R setting (also new for the FL5 is an Individual mode that lets you pick and choose your ideal settings) and found that even when our clumsy inputs meant traction at the front or grip at the rear did get start to struggle, the Type R communicates so quickly and so clearly, through the steering and the chassis, and then responds so faithfully to corrective action, that controlling it at or around its limits becomes intuitive. It’s a beautifully balanced car.
The engine is a firecracker and, as with so many modern turbocharged units, it pulls hard from pretty much everywhere. Fans of older Type Rs might miss the kick of the old naturally aspirated VTEC units, but the FL5 still revs hard all the way to its 7,000rpm redline, and rewards for being worked hard. We do wish it sounded more soulful, however, for the high rev buzz isn’t the most rewarding.
Verdict
The new Honda Civic Type R is a brilliant driver’s car. You might observe here that so too was its direct processor, only when that was launched in 2017 it cost from £30,995, rising to £36,000 for a top-spec GT model by the time it went off sale in 2021. That much is true, and while the new model is objectively better, I’m not sure that you could drive the two back-to-back and conclude the improvements to be worth £10,000.
On the other hand, you could also observe that everything is more expensive in 2023. Bread. Eggs (if you can find any). Energy. Borrowing. It all costs more than it used to, and in many cases a lot more. So in that sense, paying £50k for a fast Civic sort of makes sense. And it definitely seems more reasonable when compared with the endless queue of electric or plug-in hybrid SUVs that’ll set you back a similar amount. Next to them, the new Type R, with all the engineering love that’s been poured into it, and what will likely be very strong residual values based on limited availability, looks like positively good value.
It's a terrific addition to Honda’s rich Type R lineage, and while the gains made over the old model might sound miniscule in isolation, they do deliver a tangibly better driver’s car when experienced as a whole. Given the formidable talents of the FK8, that’s really saying something.
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Fact File
Fuel type: Petrol
Powertrain: 2.0-litre turbocharged, four-cylinder, front wheel drive, six-speed manual gearbox
Power: 325bhp
Torque: 310lb ft
0-62mph: 5.4 seconds
MPG: 34.4mpg (WLTP)
Verdict: The FL5-generation Civic Type R is an engineering love letter to the internal combustion-powered hot hatch, and a driver’s car of the highest standard.