#Ep3 jdm driver#

It may not be very fast low down, but it’s entirely happy pulling smoothly from 2000rpm, even in higher gears, and you can’t help but gain a sense of the engine’s unburstable quality through everything it does. While the Type R may be relatively weak at low revs, that’s not to say it has a poor temperament.

#Ep3 jdm driver#

There are no driver modes, no stability control, no buttons at all that need to be pressed to ‘wake up’ or ‘turn down’ the Type R. Very quickly I am remembering how much I dislike the Type R’s rather unsporting driving position, set high and with the wheel quite flat, and one that not even the lovely black and red cloth-trimmed Recaro bucket seats can salvage. There is no exhaust noise, pops, bangs or cat-superheating theatrics, just the thin, reedy note of a naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine built to Honda’s exacting standards, purring away quietly in the background. Turn the ignition key and the legendary K20 motor is a complete non-event: further evidence that modern cars haven’t become overly refined as is often bemoaned, and that memories can, and do, play tricks. The positioning of the gearlever with its rubber gaiter so close to the wheel is logical, albeit a further nod to the people-carrier influence, because the alternative of a floor-mounted shifter would have meant a long, spindly lever, almost impossible to hone into the tight, confident action I’m expecting here if memory serves me right. I close the featherlight door behind me and marvel that the silver-painted centre stack with its integral CD player could ever have seemed as modern and impressive as it once did. Soon they’d be joined by the original SEAT Leon Cupra R, and a new class of larger, 200bhp-plus hot hatches was born. Again, small fry by today’s standards, but we must remember that, just a few years before, 150bhp had seemed a very big number in this class, not least because anything more began to put undue stress on the tractive properties of the front axle. What of the EP3 today, then? Its 197bhp seems trivial in the modern world, but thanks to the delays in Ford’s Mk1 Focus RS programme, it was the Honda that ushered in this new world of the ‘200 PS’ hot hatch, with 0-60mph times in the ‘sixes’ and top speeds approaching 150mph.

Honda Civic Type R (2017-2022) review – MPG and running costs.

Honda Civic Type R (2017-2022) review – design.

Honda Civic Type R (2017-2022) review – ride and handling.Honda Civic Type R (2017-2022) review – engine, gearbox and technical highlights.Honda Civic Type R (2017-2022) review – performance and 0-60.Honda Civic Type R (FK8): review, specs and buying guide.Honda Civic Type R v Volkswagen Golf R v Hyundai i30 N v Audi RS3.Do you remember the shocking arrival of the Peugeot 307? As a Peugeot Sport fan at the time, I’ve only recently stopped having nightmares over it. ‘It’s a major cause for concern in the evo office,’ he added, ‘that hatchbacks not only appear to be getting fatter, but taller as well.’ And if you’d come from something as svelte, well- proportioned and traditional as the Peugeot 306 GTi 6, you could see his point. When I look at the EP3 Civic Type R today, I see a relatively mild-looking modern-ish hatchback when Dickie first clapped eyes on it, he thought it a ‘Japanese Mégane Scenic’ (remember the MPV?). It’s always worth undertaking such research, even at the very real risk of losing hours with one’s head stuffed in old issues of evo, not only to see what our learned friends thought of the car when it was new but, crucially for an ‘Icon’ feature, to see how their views sat within a contemporary frame of reference. I can tell you that it scored four out of five stars, and that its reception, it’s fair to say, was mixed. The new Honda Civic Type R, tested at its launch – somewhere sunny by the looks of it – by our very own Dickie Meaden, with images courtesy of that reliable artiste of note, Andy Morgan. The cover heralded the arrival of Aston Martin’s new Vanquish, but in a month that saw seismic changes to the world as we knew it, thanks to the cataclysmic events in New York and elsewhere in the US, a lightning rod through the hot hatch world warranted a mere spread. Nearly twenty years of automotive history separates today’s landscape from the contents of the pages in evo 035, but suddenly it feels like a lot longer. I pick up the September 2001 issue of evo and flick idly through its pages.