Honda’s new Civic Type-R, with its 310PS (306hp) turbocharged engine is a very cool new hatch, but it won’t be for everybody. It actually doesn’t address the same public as previous Type-R Civics, so for that reason Honda needs to make a Type-S variant which would be more like past models.
The task would not be hard: they’d take the refreshed Civic with the sportier body kit (pictured here), make it 25 percent more extreme-looking, give it bigger rims and brakes and a smaller spoiler than that of the Type-R and that’s pretty much it.
It would be a stepping stone car by definition, slotting perfectly between regular Civics and the range-topping monster.
As for engines, well, the EP3 fanboy in me would just love to see the 2.0-liter atmospheric used in one last car before emissions regulations make it unusable. Around 210 hp would be adequate along with a series of chassis tweaks aimed at making it sportier than the base car but less so than the Type-R.
However, the actual engine it’d use would be a smaller-capacity turbo unit, as is customary nowadays, a 1.6-liter unit with a twin-scroll that pumps out around the same power as the 2.0-liter mentioned above. It’d be more efficient and probably faster in gear, but there’s really genuinely no substitute in the world for a Honda Vtec being revved out.
We’re sure Honda’s decision makers have though of this too, and we hope it materializes into a car soon; it would be a (power/price) niche that they’d be unwise not to enter, even if it’s hotly contested by so many 200-ish hp hatches these days. I mean if Peugeot is going to have both a hyper-hatch and a hot hatch (which it is), then there’s no reason Honda shouldn’t have the same so as to be more competitive.
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