Earlier this month we brought you news of the new 2017 Honda Civic Type R with its crazy triple exhaust and aggressive styling. Honda are ready to show it off to Aussies this weekend, coinciding with the Formula 1 Australia Grand Prix.
There’s a lot of changes in this year’s championship and the car differences have been well documented. Another major shift is in driver lineups and with Jensen Button stepping aside, taking a vacation or whatever the heck he’s up top, that free’d up a seat at McLaren-Honda. In 2017, promising young driver, Stoffel Vandoorne has stepped up to the challenge.
Honda handed over the keys to Vandoorne at the Hilton Melbourne South Wharf, to become the first person in Australia to get behind the wheel of the all-new Honda Civic Type R. This marks the first public showing in Australia for the new Type R, following its global debut at the Geneva International Motor Show earlier this month.
“It’s a superb looking car and faithful to the ethos of what makes the Type R great — a superb engine, excellent dynamics and Honda’s proven quality and reliability,” Vandoorne said. “As a high-performance hatch showcasing Honda’s technological expertise, it’s also perfectly at home in the world of Formula 1.”
Honda’s latest hot hatch, the Type R will go on-sale soon.
Honda Australia Director, Mr. Stephen Collins said,
“We now have a defined Civic family look that unites all three models,” “The sedan and hatch are bold and distinguished while the Type R justifiably represents the pinnacle of performance in the Honda Civic line-up.”
The Honda Civic Type R shares the same fundamentals as the Civic hatch and has been designed from the ground up to reward enthusiast drivers. There’s a 2.0-litre VTEC Turbo under the hood, good for 235 kW of power and 400 Nm peak torque, along with improved throttle response and driveability.
We’ll have to test it our for ourselves, but a smoother, more precise six-speed manual transmission that now features a rev match control system, should allow you to deploy the power to the road efficiently to reward the driver with a connection to the road. That’s all any of us really want from a car, a great power-to-weight ratio, handling like its on rails and looks damn fine doing it.
The Honda Civic Type R will go on sale in Australia in the fourth quarter this year. Pricing and specifications will be announced closer to launch.
This weekend, I’ll be spending Saturday and Sunday with McLaren Honda at the F1 Australian GP, it seems to me like the perfect track to put the Type R through its paces.. I’ll strongly suggest to Honda hand over the keys to me, lets see how we go.