Honda Civic Type R

Honda’s shout-out-loud hot hatch is still no shrinking violet. But have this latest version’s refinements made it a better daily driver?

- Ian Eveleigh

‘I MIGHT HAVE A HOT HATCH WITH some big wings for you,’ said James Disdale, evo road test editor and – sometimes equally importantly to the staff on this magazine – the bloke who dishes out our long-termers. I must be in James’s good books, because a chance to spend serious time behind the wheel of evo’s current favourite hot hatch is just what I needed to wash away the blues of ‘my’ RS5 returning to Audi (see page 148). Either that or Dis mistakenly thought I’m only into tasteful 80-grand coupes these days and was trying to punish me with a spell in the most visually disruptive hot hatch ever made.