It was alarming, to say the least, to this dyed-in-the-wool Honda fan. A steady diet of NSX, Prelude, Gordon Murray, Ayrton Senna, and Alain Prost as a child and then teenager had made me utterly lust after a car with the chrome H on the bonnet. So to have recently driven the all-electric Eny: 1 and the ZR-V and experienced disappointment in both cases had rattled my old, long-held conceptions. Had Honda forgotten how to make a great car?
No. No, it hasn’t. Thankfully not. And two new arrivals in Ireland prove it, even if they’re not exactly brand new cars ...
The HR-V has been a Honda nameplate since the early 1990s, and the current edition of the HR-V has been on sale in the UK and Europe for some time. It had never been launched here, however, until now. With the arrival of an updated version, Honda finally judged the conditions right to give Irish buyers a chance.
Straight away it’s a sharper-looking thing than the last, rather anonymous, HR-V – not striking, exactly, but quietly handsome. The HR-V comes only as a hybrid, based around a 1.5-litre petrol engine running on the fuel-saving Atkinson combustion cycle. Together with a compact battery and a small electric motor, this provides 131hp and 253Nm of torque.
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Performance isn’t exactly sparkling – 0-100km/h in 10.4 seconds – and the HR-V succumbs often to the grinding, breathless, high-revving thing that most other hybrids have largely banished, or covered over with layers of sound deadening.
However, that likely won’t matter to most owners who will try to drive it somewhat more sedately in search of superior fuel economy. Which they’re likely to get – Honda claims 5.4-litres per 100km, and that seems about right for mixed driving.
The HR-V also displays a sweet driving balance, with steering that’s responds with a little more weight and feedback than is the norm in this class. I’m not trying to say that the HR-V is a driver’s car – it’s not – but it has a pleasant mien and exceptionally good body control and ride, as a testing route through rural Kildare showed. It’s seriously comfy, and that engine drone aside, nicely refined.
Better still is the interior. You’ll find plenty of hard, cheap plastics – in the Japanese car tradition, if you like – if you go looking, but overall quality is excellent, the main digital dials are clear, there are separate physical controls for the air conditioning (yea!), and the touchscreen is simple enough to use, with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
The driving position is comfy, with a supportive and slightly squishy front seat, but much better is the space in the back – even climbing in behind my own driving position, your chunky correspondent found plenty of legroom and adequate (if not exceptional) headroom. It’s certainly roomier and nicer in the front and back than Toyota’s similarly priced C-HR.
That price starts at €41,150 which is hefty for a relatively small car, but hardly enough to induce shock, these days. The price tag includes an impressive list of standard safety equipment, incidentally, for which some others will try to make you pay extra.
And then, as if to change the track from Dean Martin to AC/DC, there’s the Civic Type-R. Now, this car really does have a truly shocking price tag – €85,000 to you sir. Then again, given that this Civic is the latest in a line of Type-R models dating back to the original – and astonishing – NSX Type-R, perhaps it’s not such a hefty price tag.
It gets you a 2.0-litre turbo engine, pumping out 329hp to the front wheels, and giving the Civic Type-R a 0-100km/h time of 5.4 seconds. That, on paper, doesn’t sound all that great, but this Civic Type-R is a vehicle that eschews on-paper boastfulness, and instead truly delivers around corners.
Once you’re settled into the – exceptionally comfortable, all seats should be this good – bright red bucket seat, and you’ve spent a bit of time fondling the gorgeous aluminium gear shift lever (a manual shift in a modern car! Such fun!) the Civic’s 2.0-litre engine growls into life at a press of the starter switch. It accelerates strongly as we exit the pit lane at Mondello Park, and brake for the tight hairpin first corner.
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Within those first few seconds, the Type-R really impresses. Not only are the brakes exceptionally strong and adjustable, but the Civic’s front-end grip is absolutely amazing. There are rear-wheel drive performance cars that don’t turn into Mondello’s kerbs with the same level of ferocity, and the almost casual way the Honda puts its power down to the road – wider track front suspension and special Michelin tyres really help – is little short of exhilarating.
Up to the tricky right flick before the tighter, complex, Turn 3 – a corner that easily traps front-wheel drive cars and sucks them into an abyss of understeer, but not the Civic. That laser-guided front end just hooks up again, and the growl returns as second, third, and fourth gears fling you back up the track. This is a car you’ll want to just drive and drive and drive. Yes, you need the safe space of a racetrack to truly appreciate what it can do, but in the grand Civic Type-R tradition, it’s also roomy, practical, and when you flick the drive settings over to Normal mode, it’s even comfy enough to be a daily driver.
€85,000, though? Honestly, on this basis it’s worth every cent. This is Honda proving that it still cares, and that it can still make truly wonderful, tactile, emotional cars.
The new HR-V is Honda showing that it can do competent, sensible, mainstream. The Civic Type-R is Honda showing that it’s still Honda.
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