Honda Civic Type R targeting Focus RS

Honda's new Civic Type R is taking aim at the biggest guns in the hot hatch segment.

While Honda Australia won't talk specifics of the new sporty machine it is confident it will have long-time hot hatch favourite, the Volkswagen Golf GTI, out-gunned and will instead target the likes of the more potent, all-wheel drive Ford Focus RS.

Due to arrive in the second half of 2017 the new Civic Type R is likely to carry over the same 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine as the fourth generation Type R that missed Australia.

That engine was capable of producing 228kW and 400Nm in the current car, numbers likely to increase in the new model.

"I think the performance will be superior to [Golf] GTI," Scott McGregor, Honda Australia general manager customer and communications says.

"I haven't seen any of the details yet but I imagine it would be more playing in the Focus RS territory, if you think about lap times and things like that."

While not going into specifics Honda Australia boss Stephen Collins confirmed it would only be offered with a manual transmission and be built in the UK; the rest of the Civic hatch range will be built in Thailand.

"We're not in the position to talk details today but I think performance-wise it will be outstanding," he said. "I think last time around will sold 2000 Type Rs, so we have a huge following for Type R. We'll bring the best Type R to the market. When I say that we think the Type R will deliver all the sporty attributes the Type R is famous for. It will certainly be on sale next year, it will be competitively priced of course."

Collins also confirmed that Honda Australia would align the Civic hatch and sedan as close as possible on price and specification, taking advantage of them being built in the same Thai factory.

"We haven't locked it in but we're aiming for the same price," Collins said. "It's a business challenge but at the end of the day we really want to re-establish Civic as one of the key players and to do that we need hatch to be very competitively priced."

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