The 2015 Honda Civic Type R will arrive in European dealerships from July, but locally there’s still no confirmation the hot hatch will come to Australia.
THE 2015 HONDA Civic Type R was launched to journalists in Europe earlier this week, but in a brief conversation with Practical Motoring, Honda Australia boss Stephen Collins said the arrival Down Under of the hot hatch still hadn’t been confirmed.
Despite much local speculation, Mr Collins told Practical Motoring, “[There’s] still no decision yet, but I’m confident it will happen. [But] certainly not in 2015”.
Collins declined to go into more detail at what the potential hold-up might be, but it could be to do with the fact the new Civic Type R will be built in the UK only and the Australian dollar has tumbled making it more expensive to import the Type R. Indeed, this was the same problem Honda had when it imported the swoopy-looking UK-made Civic alongside the Thai-sourced model some years back.
The Civic Type R gets an all-new, direct-injected turbocharged 2.0-litre VTEC TURBO petrol engine, which thumps out 228kW at 6500rpm and 400Nm of torque at 2500rpm, both higher than for any previous Honda Type R model. This is mated to a six-speed manual only. Why, only a manual? Because Honda says it wanted “to safeguard an intimate, rewarding connection with the driver while making the most of the engine’s high output, strong torque and high revs”.
Stay tuned.
Any update on if the Civic Type R is coming to Australia?
Not as yet. Soon as we know we’ll post!