Watch (Nearly) Every Generation of the Civic Type R In a Drag Race
We here in North America were unfortunately not blessed with getting the majority of Honda’s Civic Type Rs. In fact, we’ve only gotten the last two generations. That means there are four other generations of Type Rs out there that we have yet to see go head-to-head with anything else.
In case you missed it:
Well, the lovely fells over at Carwow decided to give us a treat. They lined up just about every Civic Type R generation for a drag race to decide who is king of the Type R hill. I say “just about” because the first generation Civic Type R – the EK9 of the late ‘90s – was for Japan only. But hey, we’ll take what we can get. Over 20 years of Civic Type Rs are represented in this video, and that’s good enough for me.
Honda Civic Type R Generations DRAG RACE
As you can see, the Civic Type R – and the Civic itself – has changed a lot over the years. It’s grown in size, in the number of doors and it’s even sprouted a turbocharger after the second generation. But, they’re all still Civics. They’re all front-wheel drive, and they’ve all got six-speed manuals.
After a blast down the runway we actually get some rather interesting results. Obviously no drag race is perfect, and launching a manual car is not the easiest thing in the world, but the newest car isn’t the fastest. In fact, the third generation Civic Type R is actually the fastest of the bunch. Coming in last place is the second generation car – which is my personal favorite. Don’t ask me why, I just think it looks neat!
That being said, the three newer cars absolutely trounced the two older ones. It’s no surprise really. The newer cars all pump out over 300 horsepower from their turbocharged engines. The two earlier generation cars had to make do with just 200 horsepower and not enough of a weight benefit to make any real difference.
Carwow also did a brake test of the five cars, and those results are a bit more in line with what you’d think would happen. Braking got better with every single generation.
Straight line speed may not be what any of these cars were really built for, but it’s still always fun to see what has changed between each successive generation – as long as you ignore the fact the granddaddy of them all didn’t participate.
