Photo: original image by autoevolution
Honda usually likes to keep all its eggs separated according to buyer preference. While American consumers get the Civic as a cheap but very honest sedan (and coupe), Europeans are offered a 5-door hatchback that they make in Swindon, Great Britain. That's all fine and dandy, but it could mean your average Texan or Californian racer might miss out on a great deal next year.
You see, while Honda Europe marketing teams have been busy drumming up support for a brand new Civic Type R hot hatch, engineers have been busy honing a couple of test prototypes on the Nurburgring. Rumor has it that by spring they will have the fastest production front-wheel drive car in the world.
Now, with the previous EU-spec Civic Type R, you got a naturally aspirated 200 horsepower engine. It was decent, but American Si models offered more for less money, so nobody was missing out. However, come 2015, Honda has gone to a turbocharged solution pushing out 280 to 300 horsepower, easily outpacing the Ford Focus ST and Golf GTI. That sounds like something Americans might want to buy.
And according to a tip we received from Sergio J Cabrera, we know that they might get a chance to. According to a recent report, the new 2-liter turbo belongs to the Earth Dreams family and is also being developed to work to on US soil.
That makes perfect sense, considering how many Honda models would work great with a 2-liter turbo. However, the Japanese company is also getting a helping hand from a market that's finally warming up to hatchbacks.
According to motoryracing.com, a US-spec version of the Civic Type R will be ready for showing by the end of 2015. The market launch would then follow in 2016.
The Europeans might have something to gain from this as well. Due to strong competition from more popular German models, the Civic hasn't been selling all that well. Only around 100,000 of them were delivered last year, which forced Honda to fire workers and reduce output. But we think demand is bottled up and ready to explode in America, where Honda fans have been asking for the 5-door for literally decades.
Still, we have a couple of misgivings about this report, the biggest of which are the fact that the Civic 5-door is old and that importing into the US could prove very expensive. We'll have to wait another year for this report to pan out, but the Type R is definitely great news.
Now, with the previous EU-spec Civic Type R, you got a naturally aspirated 200 horsepower engine. It was decent, but American Si models offered more for less money, so nobody was missing out. However, come 2015, Honda has gone to a turbocharged solution pushing out 280 to 300 horsepower, easily outpacing the Ford Focus ST and Golf GTI. That sounds like something Americans might want to buy.
And according to a tip we received from Sergio J Cabrera, we know that they might get a chance to. According to a recent report, the new 2-liter turbo belongs to the Earth Dreams family and is also being developed to work to on US soil.
That makes perfect sense, considering how many Honda models would work great with a 2-liter turbo. However, the Japanese company is also getting a helping hand from a market that's finally warming up to hatchbacks.
According to motoryracing.com, a US-spec version of the Civic Type R will be ready for showing by the end of 2015. The market launch would then follow in 2016.
The Europeans might have something to gain from this as well. Due to strong competition from more popular German models, the Civic hasn't been selling all that well. Only around 100,000 of them were delivered last year, which forced Honda to fire workers and reduce output. But we think demand is bottled up and ready to explode in America, where Honda fans have been asking for the 5-door for literally decades.
Still, we have a couple of misgivings about this report, the biggest of which are the fact that the Civic 5-door is old and that importing into the US could prove very expensive. We'll have to wait another year for this report to pan out, but the Type R is definitely great news.
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