A humble Honda Civic zapped by radioactive waves. You get one of the quickest FWD car on the market. The biggest question is should it really be a forbidden fruit for us in the States.
Generally, most Type R (all of them) are consider forbidden fruits for us and only the latest fifth-gen CTR broke the dry spell. The fourth-gen (FK2) shown here, is technically what we have now in the States with the same turbocharged 2.0 four cylinder producing 306hp transferred by a six-speed manual to the front wheels with a similar ingenious suspension geometry to the current CTR making the tires pivot rather than rotate to reduce something called “Scrub Radius” that make torque steer virtually non-existent. Something that plaque FWD cars with high power output like the previous-gen Ford Focus RS which Ford attempted to solve with their RevoKnuckle system that wasn’t anywhere close to be as effective as Honda’s system. Therefore, resorted Ford to implement an AWD system on the current RS.
Honda’s clever suspension setup can be explored in this video:
The difference is despite the design that only a mother can love with the best looking CTR ever IMO are the third-gen (FD2) Japanese market CTR and of course the OG first-gen EK9, the 4th gen is still slightly more subtle and less “ricey” than the current gen, as well as more exclusive with a very short run between 2015 up until early 2017, the shortest production run in the CTR family.
I feel the 4th gen was a missed opportunity for both fans in the U.S. and for Honda. We may have gotten the fifth-gen with similar performance figures and improved it’s Nurburgring laptime since the 4th gen, I still wished Honda would’ve introduced the CTR to the States earlier with the 4th gen.
The Hot Wheels representation is acceptable but can’t be called good. In some ways it out beat the Tomica version but the tampos department is where it knocks down this casting. It’s basically the same horror story with the Mercedes AMG GT and the Ford Focus RS all over again with sloppy front tampos and take many attempts to find a decent example. The back tampos was slightly better but not without major flaws. The taillights seemed unfinished with trunk mounted taillight misplaced and finally the rear deck spoiler that should be black was left in body matching white. Most of these mistakes were fixable with enough time and patience.
That is all for this one, catch you guys next time. Cheers.