If you’re looking for a cool and unemotional comparison between two hot hatchbacks from the same company, you might wish to look away now.

The Type R franchise is long established, and has attracted such a huge fanboy following, that normal reviewing protocol occasionally goes out of the window, and we stroll into the good old-fashioned world of opinion, subjectivity and seat-of-the-pants snap judgments.

Although I’m old enough to know better, I’m an unashamed Type R fanboy. The red Honda Civic Type R GT in the pictures above is mine, and was recently bought for an embarrassingly small amount of money. The blue car is the 2017 model, recently vanquished by the Ford Focus RS in CAR’s group test, and is probably the best front-wheel-drive hot hatch money can buy right now.

In reality, it’s not a straight comparison – the old car is a tenth of the price, and is 120bhp down on the new car. It’s also probably not the absolute best Civic Type R – the previous-generation EP3 ‘breadvan’ is lighter, and more focused dynamically. But it’s still true to Honda’s naturally aspirated Type-R heritage, sky-high 8500rpm redline and old-school control inputs.
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Read full post here:
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/features/opinion/keith-adams/new-meets-old-2007-honda-civic-type-r-fn2-and-2017-type-r-fk8/