Coming from a great sales year across the US automotive market, Honda clearly outlined a deft strategy for conquering even more market share in 2024. But is that enough, or does the Japanese company need additional reinforcements?
After a strong 2023 in terms of deliveries, American Honda wants to bring a quartet of sustainable choices to the US market. Those include the all-electric Honda Prologue crossover SUV and the reborn Acura ZDX (complete with a Type S variant), plus the quirky CR-V with both battery power and fuel cell system. Last but not least, because it will probably be the best-selling model of the bunch, the refreshed 2025 Civic is also adding the eagerly-awaited Hybrid powertrain option.
Additional upgrades will cover the Acura MDX and RDX crossovers, while the premium brand is also bringing to life an all-new base compact to sit alongside the Integra passenger car. At Honda, meanwhile, only the Odyssey will receive additional styling and technology enhancements. As such, maybe some fans of the Japanese brand might feel that the company is focusing a bit too much on the sustainable side of things – and perhaps they want the emotional side to get some additional support, too.
Well, Honda is not a sentimental brand; we all know that. As such, it only has one true high-performance variant, unlike Acura, which has four Type S models. That is the 2024 Honda Civic Type R – and that's a shame, a lot of people believe. No worries, some of them can also do something about it – especially if they are members of the imaginative realm of digital car content creators, where everything is possible. For example, Dimas Ramadhan, the virtual automotive artist behind the Digimods DESIGN channel on YouTube, has recently taken up the task of CGI-revealing a feisty CR-V.
Naturally, he can take just one direction, hence the 2025 Honda CR-V Type R design project. It clearly gets the styling inspiration from the $44,795 Civic Type R, hence the vertical slats at the front and the center-mounted triple exhaust at the rear. Logic dictates that a sporty CR-V could easily take advantage of the compact hot hatchback's 2.0-liter K20C1 turbocharged inline-four that's also used on the Integra Type S, complete with 316 horsepower.
However, since we're on the subject of car dreams, we would easily envision the CR-V Type R as one of the most powerful and fastest ICE-powered compact crossovers on the market if Honda took a daring leap of faith and tucked inside the engine bay the 3.0-liter V6 turbo with a ten-speed automatic and 355 hp from its sibling brand Acura! What do you think? Could that swap work to make the CR-V a lot cooler than the faster-selling Toyota RAV4, or is it completely wishful thinking?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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