Much of the debate following our first drive of the new
Honda Civic Type R
- over 300 comments and rising – would not seem to be about the way it drives or the end of screaming VTECs. No. The most passionate disagreement seems to be on the aesthetics, with a disturbing number of people ready to dismiss the car purely on the basis it looks a bit mad.
A B-road weapon that looks the part!
This mirrors a very similar conversation to that inspired by our pairing of the PH Fleet Subaru
NotImpreza WRX STI
John Lewis
alternative
For all the doom and gloom about ever more restricted roads, rising fuel costs (this ‘holiday’ can’t last) and environmental pressures fast car lovers have never had it so good. Especially in the realm of hot hatches and fast saloons and estates – the ones that cover everything under one roof, from track days to Sunday blasts yet equally compatible with the Monday-Friday commute. 300hp-plus and the chassis technology to put it to the road is now a minimum, expectation of official CO2 and mpg figures to rival an eco hatchback of a few years back also a given.
GT-R engined Datsun saloon? Sign us up!
So we’ve got our substance. It’s the style that seems to be causing the divisions.
Kids of today
Fashions and means of self expression change, I get that. A decade ago an ostentatious beard on your chin or sleeve tattoo on your arm would have raised more eyebrows than a big wing on the back of your JDM rally-rep. I’m going to sound like a right old fart now but these days it’s seemingly the other way around.
We still want turbocharged, supercar chasing performance. But seemingly in cars that look like family hatchbacks, the mad aero body kit offered on the Mercedes A45 AMG the one exception to prove the rule. But when even SEAT toes the company line and unleashes a 280hp, active diffed hot hatch capable of a sub-eight ‘ring lap with a 50 shades of grey colour palette and boring wheels you know something is up.
Eccentric, charismatic ... Lexus? Yup!
And into this explode the Japanese, seemingly oblivious to how tastes have changed in the decade or so since they last made fast, exciting cars. Both the Civic and the NotImpreza have wings that’d have made a noughties modder blush. Bodykits that would embarrass a Super GT car. Exhausts that would make a
Bosozoku modder
think ‘nah, that’s a bit excessive’.
Even ‘boring’ Toyota has got in on the act, theLexus RC F bursting onto a scene of humblebragging M, AMG and RS products in a riot of baffling styling, defiantly off-trend powertrain and unapologetically aggressive character. It’s perhaps not as ‘good’ as some of its rivals. But it’s definitely interesting, charismatic and bold. Nissan is meanwhile teasing us with the idea of a GT-R engined Infiniti Q50 and Mazda has rediscovered the engineering focus and passion that went into the original MX-5 and reflected that in an assertive new look for the fourthgeneration one.
MX-5 - more assertive about being off-message
Good on you Japanese engineers! After those
glory days
of the 90s and early noughties we thought we’d lost you all to hybrids and CVT gearboxes. This is the country that for years produced some of the most exotic, technically eccentric and wilfully individualistic performance cars ever seen. Before, with characteristic deference to apparent prevailing trends, they just stopped. Thank goodness the broad shoulders of the
Nissan GT-R
were able to carry this legacy into the modern era.
But I’m disturbed by the number of people who wouldn’t give any of this new generation of Japanese performance cars even a moment’s consideration, purely on the fear of ‘what the neighbours might say’. Pitiful! I love a Q-car. A proper Q-car that is – think Mercedes E500. But the faux-conservatism that accepts 20-inch wheels and fake exhaust tips on a rep-spec diesel saloon but denounces a properly fast car with a big wing for being immature or embarrassing is just downright worrying. This, in a wider automotive culture that embraces the macho aesthetics and mindset of the SUV in all its shapes and sizes.
Thank you GT-R for carrying the flame!
Even here on PH there seems a shame culture ready to sneer at any fast car daring to express its abilities in its looks. Life is too short. And if you want to drive a hatch that can lap the ‘ring as fast as a 911 GT3 of a decade ago it ought to look like it should. Bravo to Honda for not deferring to the conservative mindset and making the Civic Type R look properly bonkers (and let’s hope some of this rubs off on the new NSX). If this is the Japanese rediscovering their eccentric and free-thinking approach to making interesting fast cars then I’m all for it.
Sod what the neighbours think.
