Honda Civic Type R GT UK 2017 first drive

The Honda Civic Type R, in this its glowering, jutting and angrily blistered fifth-generation form, has landed. Faster, stronger, more powerful and more advanced than any of its forebears, the British-built hot Honda Civic has now begun rolling off its Swindon production line in serious numbers. But has its big moment finally come?

This is the first Type R in more than a decade to move back to all-independent suspension; the first to be developed as a performance machine from the ground up rather than adapted from an existing platform. This Type R broke the lap record for a front-wheel-drive production vehicle at the Nordschleife earlier this year. And this is the first review you’ll read anywhere on an absolutely final, series-production-specification, right-hand-drive example.

Like all Type Rs to date, the fifth-generation Civic is front-wheel drive and sticks with a traditional six-speed manual gearbox for what Honda considers the purest, simplest and potentially most dynamically compelling hot hatch driving experience possible. Compared with the forth-generation model introduced only two years ago, it has a stiffer and lighter body and entirely new suspension and steering systems. A relatively understated powertrain overhaul makes for a 10bhp power boost, while torque remains unchanged.

If you like your performance statistics, you may not be instantly impressed with this car: despite the 10bhp power gain and a final drive ratio shorted by 7%, the new Type R only manages to match the car it replaces on 0-62mph standing-start acceleration (at 5.7sec) and beats it on top speed by a 2mph margin. But don’t be fooled: Honda’s claim is that the superiority of the new version runs deep – and we’ve already confirmed some of its strides in our European first drive.

Like all of Honda’s current-gen Civics, the Type R is a big car, feeling a size larger on the road than most of its immediate rivals and suffering a bit on narrower British B-roads as a result. The car’s new platform does allow for an improvement on its infamously perched old driving position, but you still don’t sit as low in it as some would like and there isn't a huge amount of telescopic steering column adjustment for longer-legged drivers.

The car’s power steering, clutch, gear lever and brake pedal all feel very carefully honed – well-weighted, progressive and positive. But there’s a softness to throttle response that’s at odds with the encouraging precision and tactility of the rest of the controls – not to mention the Type R’s long-standing reputation for hair-trigger sensitivity. Plenty of more powerful four-cylinder hot hatchbacks have less turbo lag; but then, very few offer Honda’s naturally high-revving, fractionally oversquare cylinder design.