2023 Honda Civic Type R (inc. 0-100, braking & autonomy test) review

CarExpert

Going out on a limb here - I think this is the craziest hot hatch on the market. Paul Maric tests out the 2023 Honda Civic Type R and discovers it might just be the king of hot hatches...pretty big call!  Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More Honda content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/honda More Honda Civic content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/honda/civic  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior: 00:41 Interior: 03:32 Infotainment: 04:58 Safety Tech: 06:40 Practicality: 07:20 On the Road: 10:15 Performance: 17:49 Verdict: 22:16  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #honda #civic #typer #review

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So if you're into your hot hatches, you probably know what this is.

00:03 It is the brand new Honda Civic Type R. Looks awesome in person. Now this competes with things

00:10 like the Volkswagen Golf R, the Hyundai i30 N, the new GR Corolla. It's priced at just under

00:17 $73,000, so it has become very expensive recently. Today we're going to do a detailed review of this

00:24 car. So if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of the review, you can use the timecodes

00:27 on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below. And if

00:31 you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so you can find

00:36 out every single time we drive a car with vents on the bonnet. Now exterior design, you've got

00:43 four colors to pick from. They're all free of charge, so you can pick whichever one of those

00:46 you want. Just in terms of the design, this looks so aggressive. I think the normal Civic actually

00:51 looks pretty good as it is, but this looks unreal. It's got really pumped arches up the front there.

00:56 The front's nice and aggressive as well. You've got this functional cooling here on the bonnet,

01:01 and then a stack of black as well. I think this white color works really well for the Type R

01:05 because it just offsets all of these black sections really nicely, a bit of piano black

01:10 down the bottom there as well. So it is a nice and aggressive looking design, and I think I referred

01:15 to this in our GR Corolla review as well, that, you know, this, it needs to look aggressive,

01:19 and in the future when we're going to be all driving probably electric cars, something like

01:24 this is still going to stand out and would be such a fun weekend car to drive as well, whereas

01:28 I feel like something like a Golf R just looks a bit sort of plain and understated, even though it

01:32 is quite capable. You have full LED headlights over here. You've got like a little faux vent down

01:39 here. Around the side, have a look at these wheels. So 19-inch alloy wheels. You've got like a matte

01:44 black finish on the outside there, but these tires are enormous. They're 265 mm on the front axle

01:50 and the rear axle, so it is an enormous tire for a hot hatch. Like it is unreal. Under here,

01:57 you've got a set of Brembo brakes, four-piston caliper there, nice red, you know, just looks

02:01 the piece. Up the top here, piano black on the wing mirror, indicator built into there.

02:06 Unfortunately, no 360 camera. From this angle here, I can see these exposed vents here. These

02:11 are functional as well, so they route from the back of the tire there across the side of the

02:15 car for aero. You've got piano black down the bottom there as well. That all culminates into

02:20 this little lip here, again for aero. I think it's a pretty cool looking setup. Now, come around to

02:25 the back and have a look at this thing. Look at this. That is a serious piece of kit. I love that.

02:31 Just looks unreal. So it's not over the top, even though it is over the top of the boot,

02:36 it's not over the top in terms of its appearance and, you know, it just gives this a really nice,

02:40 aggressive, board racer look. And if you compare this to the previous generation of the Type R,

02:45 I don't know, this still looks aggressive but isn't over the top. The previous gen was just

02:50 a bit much, I thought. You know, still very capable but just a bit much in terms of design,

02:54 whereas this actually looks really cool. Up the top there, shark fin aerial. You've got a little

02:58 jet here for your wiper with an actual functional wiper on the back window too, which is great.

03:03 Type R badge just there. You've got partial LED lighting and I reckon for $70,000,

03:09 I just don't understand why it isn't all LED lights in there, which is really strange.

03:13 You've got a little reflector down the side there, diffuser down the bottom here and have a look at

03:17 this. Three exhaust pipes as well, which I reckon looks great and a very aggressive bottom section

03:22 to that diffuser too. So let me know what you reckon about the design. Do you think it looks

03:26 good? I think it is a pretty aggressive looking beast of a thing. I'm keen to get your feedback,

03:30 so let me know in the comments section below. So we're inside the Type R. This is what the key

03:34 looks like. You have lock, unlock and then Honda logo on the back. It's a proximity sensing key,

03:41 so you can leave that in your pocket. You've got a push button start. It's just over here.

03:44 So in terms of the design, we have reviewed the Civic a couple of times now, but as you can see,

03:50 this looks totally different and they really have amped up the red and the Type R-ness to

03:55 the interior. So you get a Type R badge over here on this side with a build number. I like these

04:00 sort of grates that they have here as well. It's just a pretty sort of classy and sophisticated

04:06 sort of look to it. Red carpets down the bottom there. You have this red Alcantara seating. You

04:11 have an Alcantara steering wheel, red stitching here and Alcantara here as well. It is a really

04:16 special place to be seated and it really does feel like they've put a lot of effort into this.

04:20 It has a huge price tag, so I am glad that it does feel like you're getting something for your

04:25 money inside the cabin here. In terms of your touch points, so all this stuff is nice and soft

04:30 and then it sort of stays soft as you sort of work your way down. That is a little rough through

04:33 there, but that is soft there. Soft on the door as well. How soft is it? Well, we've got our

04:39 gyrometer. We've tested the main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares

04:43 to others that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description below. Now, build

04:47 quality, what's it like? Sort of fairly wonky through the centre there, which isn't great,

04:52 but the rest of this feels okay. Door slam. Sounds good. So, let's talk infotainment. You

05:00 have a nine-inch infotainment screen with some shortcut buttons off to the side here. Pretty

05:05 good screen, quite high resolution, easy to use and, you know, it's just straightforward. It really

05:12 is fuss-free, which is great. You don't have to fiddle around with anything to make stuff work,

05:15 which is good. In terms of some of the features you'll find here, this one I quite like. So,

05:20 it's basically a data logger and I like this because if you are serious about your track

05:26 driving and really want to get the most out of the experience with this car, it's able to basically

05:30 log a stack of data here for you while you're doing your drive and you can basically record

05:35 everything you need to record so that you can come back to it later, see whether your driving

05:39 is improving, so on and so forth. So, that's pretty cool. In addition to that, you have AM/FM,

05:45 DAB, digital radio and that all goes through an eight-speaker sound system. Satellite navigation

05:51 is built into here as well, but if you don't want to use that, you do have smartphone mirroring.

05:55 You have both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Apple CarPlay is wireless. This is what that looks

06:01 like. Very nice and quick and high resolution screen there as well, which is cool. This is

06:06 what Android Auto looks like. There you go, full screen. Let's see how quick that is. Nice, very

06:12 good. Not bad at all. Keep in mind with Android Auto, you have to connect it with a USB cable.

06:18 Another thing worth noting as well, just the screen here ahead of the driver, 10.2-inch display.

06:23 Looks cool because as you'll see when we go for a drive, when you move through the drive modes,

06:28 it changes the display to give you a sort of different readout. Also, you've got these LED

06:32 lights along the top here for gear shifts too, so it's a really sort of neat-looking setup. So,

06:37 we'll have a little bit of a play with that when we do go for a spin. Now, let's talk safety. So,

06:41 you have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection. You have an auto-dimming

06:45 rear vision mirror. You have a blind spot monitor built into the wing mirror. You have radar cruise

06:50 control with a lane-keeping assistant and a lane-centering assistant. We actually tested

06:54 this in the last Civic that we tested, so if you want to see how that stuff works, click up here

06:58 to watch that. You've got rear cross-traffic alert, front and rear parking sensors, and a

07:02 reverse view camera. I'll show you what that looks like. Wow, the quality of that is really

07:06 not good at all. Like, you can kind of see what's written on there, but the quality of that's pretty

07:11 poor. I don't know, $70,000-something, could have been a little better than that. This is what the

07:16 horn sounds like. Moving on to practicality, what about your phone connectivity? So, you have a 12

07:24 volt outlet over here, 180 watts, not bad. Two USB-A ports, a wireless phone charger. In terms

07:30 of storing your phone, you can store your phone here on the wireless charger if you want, or in

07:35 the cup holder. There's plenty of room there. Now, a coffee cup. What if you have a generic-sized

07:39 coffee cup like I do? Yeah, it fits in okay there. No de-lidding, which is great news in terms of

07:45 your water bottle. It's okay, but it's not very deep, so it kind of moves around a little bit.

07:50 You do have teeth to hold it in place, but it's a bit sort of wonky. A bottle inside the door,

07:56 fits in okay. Let's try a big bottle as well. Okay. No, that is a no for the big bottle,

08:04 unfortunately. Other storage, you have this center console here. It's pretty small, but,

08:08 you know, does the job. And finally, you have a glove box over here that is taken up predominantly

08:14 by that manual. Let's talk comfort. So, you have dual-zone automatic climate control. The seats,

08:20 they are manually adjustable for the driver and front passenger. Seats are very comfortable,

08:25 so they hug you in really nicely. The ride, I suspect, is going to be a little bit firm, but

08:30 they do hug you in nicely. So, if you do go for a sporty drive, they will ensure you don't move.

08:34 Steering is manually adjustable. It offers both tilt and reach adjustment, and on our reach test,

08:39 all of this stuff is easy to reach while you're driving. Okay, second row. So, let's start off

08:44 with room. Knee room is good. Toe room is not too bad. Headroom is okay. My head sort of just

08:50 touches the roof there. I love the way this looks. This is unreal. You've got Type R in here,

08:55 and it's on this sort of etched surface as well. So, I love that they've actually thought about

09:00 your rear passengers as you terrify them when you go for a drive, which is cool. This is a

09:04 four-seater, so there's no seat here in the middle. So, you just get these two cup holders.

09:08 Fit your bottle in there without any dramas. The bottle fits inside the door too. Now,

09:13 one thing I did notice, there's no air vents and no charging here either, which I reckon is a little

09:17 bit disappointing. If you do have kids, you have ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats with two

09:21 top tether points. It's a really comfy place to be seated. Let's do our window test. Let's have

09:27 a look. Does it go all the way down? Oh, so close, but it is auto up and down. So, let's sort cargo

09:33 capacity. Crack the boot open. So, you have a little over 400 litres of cargo space available

09:40 in the standard sort of form here. I mentioned this in our other Civic review. I quite like this

09:44 simply because it's very easy to get rid of. You don't need to worry about storing your cargo

09:48 blind anywhere. Very clever solution. Beneath the cargo floor, you have nothing. There is no spare

09:54 tyre there. Let's have a look at what it looks like with our bags in there. So, there's the

09:57 laptop bag. Our suitcase fits nicely. Then what you can do, if you do want a little bit more space,

10:07 you can drop the second row from here. So, you just whip these forward. Expands the space to

10:12 a little over 1200 litres. Okay, so we have just hit the road in the Civic Type R. You know what,

10:22 just recently with GR Corolla being launched and I think Jimny as well, we haven't driven manuals

10:28 for ages and it's just fun to hop back in a car where you're actually doing something instead of

10:32 it doing everything for you. And this is only available in a manual as well, which kind of

10:36 gives you an idea of the intentions, gives them a bit more refinement in terms of getting the

10:41 product engineered as well because you're only focusing on one type of transmission. So, let me

10:45 run through the specs here. Some of this is going to sound familiar. 2-litre turbocharged,

10:49 four-cylinder petrol engine, 235 kilowatts of power, 420 newton metres of torque. Sounds

10:56 familiar because it feels like a carryover engine from previous generation of Type R,

11:00 but they have made some changes. So, there were changes to the way the turbocharging system works.

11:05 There are also changes to a lot of elements of the chassis beneath the skin. And I like the fact

11:10 that they've actually gone to town on making this even more of a point and shoot weapon. And when

11:16 we go for a fast lap, we'll see exactly how it feels behind the wheel. But given they've committed

11:20 to front-wheel drive where the likes of Toyota have gone to all-wheel drive, I think they are

11:23 pretty confident in what they've done here. That's all mated, like I said, to a six-speed

11:27 manual transmission. I love this gear lever. It's got like a metal sort of top to it. The shift

11:32 action is fantastic. It's a nice and short throw. When we drove the GR Corolla, I kind of complained

11:37 a bit that the gear shift action felt a little bit sloppy, whereas this actually feels like

11:41 you're doing something and it is really quite sort of rigid. Clutch as well, it's got a bit of weight

11:46 to it, but it's not over the top. So, you know, doing all your actions, you actually feel like

11:51 you're doing something, which is nice. Pedal box is good as well, but I did find with my big shoes,

11:56 when I go for the brakes, I am catching the throttle on the way down as well. So, it is worth

12:00 keeping that in mind. You do have a rev matching function here in some of the drive modes. It

12:04 allows you to rev match on downshift. I've switched it off because I just prefer to kind of do it

12:09 myself, but it's good to know the feature is there. Now, Honda claims a combined fuel economy

12:17 of around nine litres per 100 k's. What are we sitting on here? We're currently sitting on 15,

12:23 and the reason for that is we've just been doing a lot of fast driving this morning. So,

12:28 yeah, look, the fuel economy isn't going to be great if you go hard for it, but if you are just

12:31 tootling around the city, it's going to be fine. Just speaking of which, I love these gauges down

12:35 here as well. We're just in comfort mode at the moment, and I love how you've got stuff like

12:39 boost pressure. So, if I drop that back to second and we dial on the revs, see it goes up there. You

12:45 can hear a little blow-off valve under the bonnet there as well. Have a listen. Sounds like fun.

12:54 You've also got this little gauge here that gives you an idea of how many megapascals of pressure

12:58 you're applying to the brakes. If I go on them hard, you can see that sort of increases with

13:03 the more brake pedal input I have, and then likewise with the throttle. The harder I push

13:07 that, that comes up as well. So, now, what's it like to drive in comfort? So, in comfort,

13:12 it's actually all really nice and civil. You'd never think that this is some hardcore sports

13:17 car. Part of that is thanks to the suspension. It uses adaptive damping. So, in comfort mode,

13:22 it is firm, I'm not going to lie, but it isn't over the top, and that's important because we've

13:28 got our sine waves coming up here. We'll dial up 130. You want to be able to drive this around

13:33 normally and just enjoy it as a normal car without worrying about it destroying your back all the

13:38 time. But even as a result of that, here on the sine waves, it's still really nicely tuned. The

13:44 body control is excellent. It really doesn't fuss about too much. There is a fair bit of tire noise.

13:49 We used our calibrated sound meter to get an idea of how much tire noise there is, but you will

13:55 notice a fair bit coming into the cabin, especially on the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires. So, that is

14:00 worth keeping in mind. Okay, so you've taken a wrong turn in a town and you've arrived at the

14:06 worst road in Australia. This is a new test that we're doing at 90km/h just to see how well cars

14:14 perform with what is probably the worst road I've ever seen. We've got a condensed sine wave here as

14:18 well. You can hear in my voice that this ride is very firm. It is coping okay with this, but yeah,

14:24 it is bloody firm. Yeah, on that condensed sine wave, it is just doing a great job in terms of

14:31 settling the suspension, but on this bumpier stuff along the back here, it is

14:35 kind of all over the place. So, yes, don't go driving your Civic Type R on a country road

14:40 somewhere. In terms of visibility, I can see clearly down the front of the car there. I can

14:47 also see clearly down the side of the car. Those wing mirrors are pretty decent. Visibility out

14:51 the back is okay. It's quite a narrow envelope, but it's all pretty straightforward. So, you do

14:56 have a bimodal exhaust, but it doesn't really sound that good from the outside in comfort. So,

15:02 you've got drive modes here, individual, sport, comfort. Let's go straight to

15:05 plus R. That changes the display on the screen there as well. My God, the ride becomes very firm.

15:15 All right, here comes our first corner. Wow.

15:20 It has got some serious road holding. My God, the steering is so accurate as well.

15:28 It is incredibly direct. This is insane. It is so firm, but man, we are really moving.

15:42 I can't even speak at the moment. This thing is bloody fast. We had the GR Corolla here recently.

15:48 I think this may actually be quicker than that. Wow. Just point to point, it is remarkable how

15:58 much power it has. And then you don't expect it to be as firm as it is, but it sort of feels pretty

16:06 planted there. Let's go grab the limiter. All right, pound it on the back straight here. Far out.

16:11 It is absolutely hauling. Wow. That is insane. Absolutely insane.

16:22 I've got to catch your breath there. That is ridiculous. I think that, obviously,

16:27 on our ride and handling track here, it simulates a country road here in Australia,

16:33 and it's probably not the best condition to drive this in plus R mode with everything on

16:37 its firmest setting. But in individual mode, you can actually configure the suspension,

16:41 all that sort of stuff to be in a much softer setting for a bit more balance and less

16:46 bucking about, especially if you need to bump mid-corner. But the way this applies torque is

16:51 insane. It uses a limited slip differential, so on the front axle, when you do apply throttle

16:54 mid-corner, it really isn't doing anything out of the ordinary. And it just shows you how far

17:00 these systems have come. Because I remember when we drove the Focus ST, that thing was

17:04 kind of all over the place, whereas this is incredibly well-sorted. It has over 400

17:08 newton-metres of torque that you're ploughing through that front axle. It really just hooks

17:12 up and goes. There's just no fuss about it. That limited slip differential works perfectly with

17:16 this system. 265mm wide tyres as well. And it is slightly damp as well. It's been sort of raining

17:21 this morning. So I've got to tell you, this is an absolute weapon. And in fact, I'd go so far as

17:27 saying this has to be one of the best hot hatches I've driven. The Golf R is impressive as an

17:31 all-wheel-drive vehicle, but this just has another level of engagement altogether. You won't get the

17:37 comfort that you get in a Golf R, but if an engaging drive is what you're after, this really

17:41 just tops the list. Okay, time to do a little bit of performance testing. Unfortunately, it has

17:47 rained, so this isn't going to be the best result in the world. But I thought we'd do this twice,

17:52 once in the Sport mode and then once in Plus R mode. We'll give that a shot. So, okay, that's

17:58 Sport mode. I'm going to turn... Actually, let's leave Distraction Control on. So we'll give that

18:02 a shot. The official time is 5.4 seconds. Like I've said before, normally what we would do when

18:07 testing these cars is just try continuously until we meet manufacturer claims. But I'm just, for the

18:13 sake of showing you what it's like for a normal person to do this, I'll just do it normally and

18:17 we'll just take whatever number we're given instead of trying 10,000 times to get there.

18:21 So this is Sport mode, Traction on. It has a launch control function, so I have my foot flat

18:26 on the floor and you can see it holding revs there. So I'm going to use that and then just

18:30 slip the clutch a little bit and then we'll see how we go. Yeah, it bogs down a bit there.

18:43 Nice gear shift. We'll go all the way through to 120.

18:47 Okay, that's 120 there. Let's have a little sticky-beak at our time. So, 0 to 100, 6.65

18:57 seconds. So over a second clear of that official time. And then 80 to 120 was 3.69 seconds, which

19:04 is actually a pretty impressive figure. That gives you an idea of how quickly this will do things

19:07 like overtaking, so that mid-range is excellent. Okay, take two. This time we're going to do plus

19:12 R mode and I'm going to turn Traction Control off as well because it does bog down a little

19:16 bit there off the line. So press that, turn Traction Control off. I'm curious to see here,

19:24 I haven't actually checked this, whether I can adjust the launch control speed.

19:28 No, it doesn't look like it. So it is just set at 3,500. I reckon it needs a few more revs because

19:35 it's, it should, I reckon four, four and a half should be where we launch from. But

19:39 let's give it a shot anyway. Let's see what happens. So here we go.

19:42 I'm just going to slip the clutch, traction is off.

19:45 All right, felt better. And just through to 120 again.

20:02 The other thing I noticed as well there is there's a gear shift from second to third,

20:06 just as you hit 100 Ks an hour, which I think probably slows us down a tiny bit as well.

20:13 So zero to 100 that time, 6.46 seconds. Yeah, so it's pretty much the exact same as Sport mode.

20:19 Yeah, I reckon that gear shift from second to third slows it down a little bit. I think if I

20:24 held second and let it run through to the limiter, we'd probably get a better stab at that. And I

20:30 can't see any settings in here to actually change the launch control rev band. So,

20:36 yeah, we should just get a little bit more out of that.

20:38 Okay, so I just redid that run just to check whether I'm actually right or not. Yeah, 5.97

20:55 seconds if I don't shift to third. So that's where it's losing its time. And then I think

20:59 if you play with it for a little bit there, it's probably not too hard to get on a dry surface

21:04 down to 5.4. So there you go. It is pretty quick though for what it is. And I just love the fluency

21:09 of the gear shifts. It really just smacks those changes and just takes off nicely. So yeah,

21:14 pretty impressive. Okay, time to do a 100 to zero stop. See how good these brakes are. So we'll dial

21:20 up 100 k's an hour. Got my marker here for our brake. There's 100 and... All right, you hear that

21:33 rev matching stuff flare up a little bit there. So 100 to zero, 2.58 seconds, 35.43 metres. That

21:42 is impressive. That is really, really impressive. So if you want to see how the Civic Type R compares

21:49 to other cars that we've tested for the zero to 100, 80 to 120 and also the 100 to zero,

21:54 have a look at the link in the description below. We're building out that table, but it will

21:57 soon have more cars in it as we go. And now, the one you've been waiting for,

22:01 how quick does the Type R go in reverse? All right, let's see how it goes. Wow,

22:08 59 k's an hour, but boy, does it launch when it goes into reverse. Very impressive.

22:18 Okay, Honda Civic Type R, this is absolutely unreal. This is the most hardcore hot hatch on

22:24 the market, I reckon, or if not the most hardcore, it is one of the most hardcore. It delivers just

22:30 stupendous performance point to point. The LSD on the front really doesn't falter. It is excellent.

22:35 I forgot to mention as well, when we went for that drive, the brakes are fantastic too. I gave them

22:39 an absolute hiding and they just didn't show any signs of fade. So yeah, look, if you do want a

22:44 proper hardcore hot hatch, this is the king of the pile. It is great. So in terms of negatives,

22:50 it is really just nitpicky stuff. I'd love a bit more exhaust sound. Air vents in the back row

22:54 would be nice. That's about it. It is an absolute smile maker. So let me know, have you ordered the

23:01 new Civic Type R? Let me know in the comments section below. Let me know what you think about

23:05 it. How's it going? What colour did you get? All that sort of fun stuff. If you did enjoy this

23:09 video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your buddies. If you haven't done so

23:12 already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon as well. But until next time, take it easy.

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