Honda Accord Type R: PH Buying Guide
Tempted by a Type R after our recent evangelising? Here's how to get the best!
Of course, the engine used VTEC variable valve timing to achieve its 212hp maximum. If you wanted to keep it on the boil, you had to brush the red line before each change as the five-speed manual gearbox's ratios didn't allow any margin for laziness. It didn't help there was only 159lb ft of torque at 6,700rpm, but a helical limited-slip differential helps put every drop of power to good use.
The H22A7 engine was, and is, a glorious engine. Little wonder the Type R soon gained a reputation for being the hardest charging sport saloon you could buy this side of £25,000. Not everyone loved its all or nothing character, so it was just as well the Accord was fastidiously built and easy to live with thanks to its four-door practicality and 29mpg.
A facelifted version arrived in 2001 and the only obvious exterior clue was a front grille with slats rather than mesh. However, the gearbox had been strengthened internally to solve a problem with crunching synchromesh. This also saw the official 0-62mph time fall to 6.7 seconds.
This was all for the cars sold in Europe through Honda's dealer network, but now you may find imported Type Rs with the Euro-R designation. Confusingly, these were Japanese market machines that used the 'Euro' tag as a nod to their European inspiration and they were sold from 2000 to 2002. There are detail differences between the two versions, with the most important being the Euro-R's engine produces 220hp.
However, the same caveats apply when buying either and you'll pay from £1,500 for a high mileage example with some MOT left to run. It's worth paying more for a car that's been cared for and has a full service record, which is likely to be around £3,000. The very best can still fetch £4,500.
PHer's view:
"Had one new and then bought another a couple of years back for old time's sake. Still felt as good as ever, though it's needed more maintenance than I expected to keep it on song."
Dave Bunker
Buying Guide contents:
Introduction
Powertrain
Rolling chassis
Body
Interior
At a glance
Search for Honda Accord Type Rs here
A.C being an option is a handy thing to have, Front Fog lights were an option and check to see if it has the rare optional suede armrest, different from other Accords. As on the last post made on the ATR, brilliant cars, underrated and a great drivers car that does everything. Well worth buying one now before they are down to the few hundred with only 648 recorded last year on the road. Love mine and its in stock form apart from a catback exhaust...
Unless you are very patient i'm not sure you would have the luxury of choice regarding rust/full history/low mileage etc.
Just buy the best you can and spend a little on fixing whatever's wrong with it.
Loved the similar engine in the Civic though.. Really suited the car well.
They have a great Recaro interior as well, unfortunately parts are rare and expensive. There was an after market exhaust on mine when I bought it and it was dreadful. I tried to change it for standard but they don't make them anymore so only boomy max-power exhausts are available, its one of the reasons I sold the car, in fact the only reason! I love the orchestral sound the engine made, hated exhaust bass drone drowning it out.
There are so few low mileage examples that I can't see values going up except for the very best low mileage examples of which there are probably a handful in the UK and they are all probably keepers and you would need to extract them from their kicking and screaming owners with lots of hard cash! Most are way over 150,000 miles. Its such a shame as they are stunningly good to drive, so if you want one buy a high miles, FSH example with no rust (look up in the pedal box) and enjoy £1,500 of the best FWD saloon motoring available. If you find a unicorn example, no rust, FSH, low (ish) miles PM me and I will buy it (as long as it has a mint standard exhaust) :-)
I remember the fantastic noise the engine made at the top end, and I remember the surge of acceleration when the VTEC system switched the cam lobes over, but I found the rest of it pretty forgettable to be honest, except for the gearing, which annoyed me. If you were even a few hundred revs short of the red line when changing up, it dropped out of the high rev mode on the VTEC after the up-shift, so you had a very annoying pause in proceedings for a second or so before the revs built again and you were off. Also the amount of outright performance on tap, in my personal opinion, wasn't really in line with the amount of effort needed to extract it.
To me it was a very focused (and beautifully engineered) drivetrain in a pretty unremarkable car.
A colleague on the other hand loved it, and went out next week and bought one. Put 80,000 hard driven miles on it without so much as a misfire, and it made him smile every day. The world would be boring if we all liked the same thing.
In reality I'll wager the ATR has more acceleration than those (rather unreliable) TSI's throughout most of the comparative rev-ranges.
Very good buyer's guide (owned one for a year). As I've said before in other threads, the a/c is pretty essential on a pre-facelift car as the ventilation system is very poorly designed and restrictive and it will fog up unless the ac is on all the time in most weathers. The facelift they improved this iirc.
Never use ordinary unleaded - they run like crap.
Did it? IIRC everyone who was "in the know" about affordable performance cars at that time were queuing up to buy Impreza Turbo's.
I know I was... The torque and the traction made the Subaru charge a lot harder than this Honda. Or pretty much anything at that time that wasn't silly money. Better soundtrack as well.
In reality I'll wager the ATR has more acceleration than those (rather unreliable) TSI's throughout most of the comparative rev-ranges.
In reality I'll wager the ATR has more acceleration than those (rather unreliable) TSI's throughout most of the comparative rev-ranges.
Assuming it wasn't from a standing start (being on a dual carriageway), could it be that the ATR was in the wrong gear?
It just seems odd to me that a heavier golf, with around 150bhp, would be quicker than a properly driven, lighter Accord Type R with around 210bhp.
Would the difference in torque really make that much difference? Genuinely interested
In the two years I had mine I never found it lacking in torque- just instances where I found myself in the wrong gear. In fact it was one of the aspects that I preferred about it over the DC2 I'd had previously, it was much more drivable outside of Vtec.
Did it? IIRC everyone who was "in the know" about affordable performance cars at that time were queuing up to buy Impreza Turbo's.
I know I was... The torque and the traction made the Subaru charge a lot harder than this Honda. Or pretty much anything at that time that wasn't silly money. Better soundtrack as well.
Assuming it wasn't from a standing start (being on a dual carriageway), could it be that the ATR was in the wrong gear?
It just seems odd to me that a heavier golf, with around 150bhp, would be quicker than a properly driven, lighter Accord Type R with around 210bhp.
Would the difference in torque really make that much difference? Genuinely interested
In the two years I had mine I never found it lacking in torque- just instances where I found myself in the wrong gear. In fact it was one of the aspects that I preferred about it over the DC2 I'd had previously, it was much more drivable outside of Vtec.
They have a great Recaro interior as well, unfortunately parts are rare and expensive. There was an after market exhaust on mine when I bought it and it was dreadful. I tried to change it for standard but they don't make them anymore so only boomy max-power exhausts are available, its one of the reasons I sold the car, in fact the only reason! I love the orchestral sound the engine made, hated exhaust bass drone drowning it out.
There are so few low mileage examples that I can't see values going up except for the very best low mileage examples of which there are probably a handful in the UK and they are all probably keepers and you would need to extract them from their kicking and screaming owners with lots of hard cash! Most are way over 150,000 miles. Its such a shame as they are stunningly good to drive, so if you want one buy a high miles, FSH example with no rust (look up in the pedal box) and enjoy £1,500 of the best FWD saloon motoring available. If you find a unicorn example, no rust, FSH, low (ish) miles PM me and I will buy it (as long as it has a mint standard exhaust) :-)
Who would want those droopy standard exhaust tail pipes.
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