After a tease lasting for months, Honda will finally reveal the 2023 Civic Type R next Wednesday. The Japanese automaker put a date on the news with yet another teaser – a 24-second video posted to YouTube.
Two High-Performance Civics
For the uninitiated, Honda traditionally builds two different high-performance Civics.
The Civic Si is the athlete in casual clothes. It will outperform most other small cars but does it while looking like a relatively normal car.
The Type R is the Civic dressed for game day. It will outrun the Si and look brash compared to most of traffic.
An All-New Civic This Year
Honda introduced an all-new Civic for the 2022 model year. It’s the most refined model yet – our test driver unironically compared it to pricey German sport sedans. It won our Best Buy Award among compact cars this year, and its $22,550 starting price (plus a $1,095 delivery fee) puts it within reach for many buyers. Its 158 horsepower makes it more than enough for stoplight-to-stoplight fun.
The Civic Si followed shortly after. It bumps power up to 200 horsepower and adds a limited-slip differential and retuned steering to make it handle more like a sports car. At $27,500, it’s pricier than the standard Civic but still cheaper than many performance cars.
The Type R is the last piece to click into place. The last version carried a price tag near $40,000, though it sold out quickly.
Related: Honda Civic Turns 50. Here it is Through The Years
What The Last One Tells Us
The 2021 Type R – before the current redesign – put down 306 horsepower from a 4-cylinder engine turbocharged to within an inch of its life. We’d be surprised to see Honda back down much from that figure. It also offered a 6-speed manual transmission with rev-matching, so we expect to see that again.
The Type R has been seen testing at Germany’s famed Nürburgring race track in recent months. There, it wears a giant rear wing that would look comical on most cars and wider fender flares than other Civics. But, otherwise, the bodywork seems to be tamer than many generations of Type R.
We’ll bring more details after the reveal on the 20th.
