Honda Caught Testing And Taking Pictures Of The 2023 Civic Type R At The Nürburgring

It isn’t much of a surprise to see a performance car being tested at the Nurburgring these days. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see non-performance cars there. But Honda might have been doing more than just testing the 2023 Civic Type R at the track recently.

Our trusty spy photographers caught not just Honda’s engineering teams following the progress of the car but some photo- and videographers too, taking their own pictures of this near-production prototype at the fearsome track.

Naturally, performance cars being what they are, we have some guesses as to what Honda was doing at the track, but we should be clear that this is just a guess. It’s not hard to imagine, though, that if Honda were armed with a shiny, new Nurburgring FWD lap record, it might help it get even more press coverage and excite the fanbase even more.

Honda has already started trying to associate its hot compact car with race tracks. It has published photos of the car hiding under camouflage at some of the world’s great race tracks, including Japan’s Suzuka International Racing Course (where it set a FWD lap record) and it has announced that the prototype will make its American debut at the Honda Indy 200 in July.

Although that means that it will still be covered in camo (and details may be restricted) the car will take several hot laps around the circuit and will serve as the lead vehicle at the start of the July 3rd race.

Unfortunately, there remain many mysteries about the production car’s final specs. Photos have shown, though, that the car features a unique grille, a sporty front bumper, front fender vents, and pronounced side skirts. It also has red, high-performance brake calipers, as you might expect, and it gets a pretty racy-looking center-mounted triple exhaust.

Inside, the car will get a microfiber-wrapped sport steering wheel, red seat belts, and heavily bolstered seats, as well as a metallic knob for the six-speed manual transmission. Just what that transmission is bolted to remains a mystery, but the smart money’s on a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine. The outgoing model makes 306 hp (228 kW/310 PS) and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm) of torque, so we would expect it to make at least that much power, if not more.

No matter what’s going on under the hood, Honda promises that this will be the best performing Civic Type R ever.