Rated

The Past and Present Are Worlds Apart, but Both These Red-badged Beasts Show the Brilliance Honda Can Achieve

- Dan Prosser

YOU’LL HAVE seen the video. The brown leather loafers; the unfortunate, bright white socks. When Ayrton Senna tested the Honda NSX-R at Suzuka in the early 1990s, it was, to him, just a day of promotional activity. He could never have known anoraks like me would still be wittering on about that day more than a quarter of a century later. But it’s just too good to forget, isn’t it? One of the great F1 drivers at the height of his powers, whipping chunks out of a very special supercar as though a championship was on the line. Then there are the surgical heel-and-toe down changes, the kerb-hopping four-wheel drifts... Not even the questionable footwear could dull the occasion.

Oh, well. Maybe that Suzuka moment will never be bettered. With a new Civic Type R and a stunning first-generation NSX-R (this one Pearl Yellow rather than the Championship White of Senna’s car) sat before me, their keys stuffed into my pocket, I reckon this might just be a moment that’ll be worth retelling 25 years hence.

Between them, the fifth-generation Civic Type R and the hardcore NSX-R, which sits so low you could trip over it, bookend the Type R story. I suppose it’s fitting that Honda’s fastest hot hatch should arrive in the same year that its performance brand reaches the quarter century (2017). The Type R dynasty began with the pop-up headlight NSX-R in 1992, the first car to wear the now famous red ‘H’ badge.

Honda would have you believe the NSX-R’s normally aspirated 3.0-litre V6 develops 206kW, but if that high-revving, motorsport-derived unit isn’t actually churning out more than 100 horsepower per litre, I’ll be amazed. Nonetheless, it’s unlikely to develop more power than the Civic’s turbocharged four-pot, which is rated at 228kW/400Nm. Such is progress.