Honda has previewed the Civic Type R with an official sketch ahead of the car's global debut in concept form at the Geneva motor show next month.
The new Type R will be launched in Europe early next year, and is described by its design team as a "racing car for the road".
The outlandish rear wing has been incorporated into the Civic hatchback's prominent tail-light clusters and the much wider tracks have been accommodated by smoothly integrated vented wheel arch extensions. At the back, the car gets a large diffuser-style insert in the rear bumper, housing twin dual exhausts, while a matte black section of rear bumper runs down the sides of the car and into the sill extensions. The final bodywork is expected to be made mostly of pressed aluminium panels.
The Civic Type R is powered by a newly developed turbocharged 2.0-litre petrol engine. Officially, in early development it was good for “over 277bhp”, but unofficially it is understood that the Tochigi engineering mule had around 300bhp. It seems likely that Honda’s engineers will start further testing in the coming months with more than 300bhp.
What is fixed is the fact that the Type R will get a six-speed manual gearbox as standard, despite the recent performance car shift to dual-clutch automatic gearboxes.
The Type R’s chassis has been stiffened and markedly widened, but it retains the relatively simple torsion beam rear suspension of the production models. However, adaptive rear dampers will be standard on the Type R
and are said to make a big difference to the performance of the rear suspension.