Steve Sutcliffe drives the 2022 FL5 Honda Civic Type R on road and track.

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Despite the rabid anticipation surrounding the new Honda Civic Type R, and the eye-watering £46,995 price tag Honda has just attached to it, the car itself contains surprisingly few all-new components beside the car it replaces. Yes, it has a new bodyshell that’s 15 per cent stiffer than before (which is a great starting point) but its engine and gearbox are essentially the same as before, as are its steering, brakes and suspension. And yet the overall result is a hot hatchback that once again rewrites the rules when it comes to front-wheel drive dynamics. It is, quite simply, the best hot hatchback there has ever been. In places, by quite some margin.

How? Well what Honda has done with the Type R this time is clever, and quite unusual. Rather than spend time and money developing a range of brand-new components, Honda’s engineers have instead evolved what they already knew worked rather well on the existing Type R, fine tuning them to a level that would never have been possible had they started from scratch.

On the one hand, you could argue that the budget wouldn’t have allowed them to develop an all-new powertrain in the first place, so they had no option but to work on what they already had. But on the other hand, few manufacturers would have the confidence to allow its engineers to spend four years essentially honing a car that was already in a class of one, but that’s essentially what Honda has done here. Steve Sutcliffe tests the newcomer on road and track in this first drive review.

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