Honda aficionados get your loud speakers ready to chuck it in the everyone’s faces — the latest Civic Type R is the world’s fastest front-wheel drive production car and it has a 7m 43.8s Nürburgring lap time to prove it.
Clocking up such a time around the 21km loop makes it nearly seven seconds quicker than the outgoing Type R, and beats out the previous record holder — the Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport S — by three seconds.
The new Type R packs a K20C turbo heart that produces 228kW with a six-speed box backing it. That engine will make this the most powerful Honda ever sold in North America — but some of the for the car’s extra speed goes to a more rigid body structure and the fact it weighs in at about 15kg lighter than the old generation.
Lead chassis engineer, Ryuichi Kijima, attributes the blistering time to higher cornering speeds due to “a wider track and tires, a longer wheelbase, a new multi-link suspension in the rear and optimized aerodynamics that improve stability.”
It’s lap time puts the Type R in the big boys club, looping Nürburgring in the same amount of time as a Pagani Zonda (2002) and the Audi R8 V10 5.2 (2009). Even quicker than the BMW M4 managed back in 2015.
Despite the way some critics feel about Nurburgring lap times, clocking in a record lap time at what many consider to be the world’s demanding track is nothing to spit at. We eagerly await Honda’s arrival next year to slap a few far more expensive cars in their cheaper, lighter Civic and continue to raise the front-wheel drive bar.
Check out the sweet in-car footage below:
