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Rating

Verdict Less fun than walking

The old Civic Type R won favour not because it was the best hot hatchback but precisely because everyone’s parents - me - were still harping on about the brilliance of the Golf GTI and how sad it was that Peugeot had gone off the boil. But once the youth moved into Honda-land they found that, actually, the Civic had a number of things going for it. It was relatively cheap to insure and there were many performance and styling parts on offer.

There was something else, too. It was actually very good fun to drive. For the money, there was very little else that could put such a huge smile on your face.

So what about the new one? Well, it does look fantastic. The Type R’s wheelarch-filling wheels transform the Civic into a properly exciting-looking car. The sort of thing you’d buy for your son, and then keep.

Don’t, though. Because almost everything else about it is rubbish. First of all there’s the rear spoiler. From the outside it looks great, arching across the rear window like that, but from the inside it means you cannot see the car behind.

Engine? Well what they’ve done is taken the 198bhp unit from the old Civic and popped it, pretty much unchanged, into the new one. That, of course, would be fine if the new one weighed the same as the old one, but it doesn’t. It weighs a whole lot more.

The fact is that Ford, Renault, Vauxhall and Volkswagen can all sell you a hatchback with much more get-up-and-go. Cunningly, Honda has tried to mask this lack of oomph by fitting the new Type R with a suspension system that, plainly, is made out of bricks.

All things considered, then, I pretty much hated it. It is nowhere near as good as a Golf GTI because, to be honest, it’s nowhere near as good as walking.

Current price £18,990

Price when tested (May 2007) £18,627

Engine 1998cc, four cylinders

Power 198bhp @ 7800rpm

Torque 142 lb ft @ 5600pm

Transmission Six-speed manual

Fuel/CO2 31mpg (combined) / 215g/km

Top speed 146mph

0-62mph: 6.6sec