$90,0000 Civic: The Race-Ready Type R Honda Will Sell You Today
We and many others have praised the current Honda Civic Type R as being one of the best all around performance cars you can get for the money. It's practical, quick, and quite fun to drive with its 306 hp turbocharged engine and fully dialed-in chassis.
The Type R is also known as a giant killer when it gets on to a race track, and its with that thought in mind that Honda Performance Development has just introduced a turn-key Civic Type R that's built specifically for grassroots touring car racing.
Known as the Type R TC, the car begins as a standard FK8 Civic Type R body in white from Honda's Swindon plant in the UK before being fully prepped and modified by the HPD engineers, with the idea to make the process both quicker and more affordable than taking a standard issue Type R street car and doing the same work individually.
Power comes from the same proven 2.0 liter VTEC turbo engine as the street car, and depending on the specific race class requirements power can be adjusted from 270 horsepower all the way up to 330 horsepower. The gearbox is based on the Type R's factory setup, but includes beefed up third and fourth gears as well as Cusco/HPD limited slip differential.
Elsewhere, the Type R TC gets a full suite of adjustable suspension components, Girodisc two-piece brake rotors and a number of cooling upgrades for both the brakes and engine. Also gone are the Type R's factory 20" wheels, replaced by a set 18" x 9.5" Forgestars.
More important are the safety upgrades that are part of the Type R TC package including a welded, multi-point roll cage, OMP seat, harness and fire supression system as well as a 16-gallon fuel cell. It also comes complete with a full data-logging setup.
The Type R TC will be available to racing license holders through HPD and is built to compete in the SRO Touring Car Americas TC class as well as various NASA and SCCA competition classes. Honda also says the car is geared toward skilled drivers who want to advance from a street Type R into a fully prepared race version.
The price for all of this comes in at $89,900 which sounds tremendously expensive for a Honda Civic, but it's actually quite good when you consider this is a brand new, turn-key race car that's ready to compete.
The Type R TC will slot into the middle of a Honda Racing Civic lineup that already includes a less powerful Civic Si TC race car at $52,000 and a wide-body, sequential transmission equipped top dog Civic Type R TCR at $172,000. Depending on your perspective, these cars may be the most expensive Civics ever, or some of the easiest and most affordable ways to jump into the world of modern touring car racing.
You can also look here to see our own experiences when we swapped out a set of the Civic Type R's 20" wheels and tires for a set of lighter, wider and stickier 18s.
