Honda Type R faces off with Volkswagen GTI

1.619314-769677134 — Volkswagen Golf GTI and Honda Civic Type R Image Credit: Christopher List/ANM

Type R. First of all, the word Type immediately commands admiration — Jag E Type, Alfa Tipo 33, Bugatti Type 35…

Second, everybody knows that if you need some spicing up in your model line-up, all you have to do is add an S model designation. Better yet, two Ss like the Chevys, or even three, as in the Datsun 1600 SSS. Four would be ridiculous, which is why in the car alphabet R actually comes after S. And it's a fact that R, no matter what you stick it on, stands for Race. Which is why, looking at its impact and fan base, Honda's Type R nomenclature can mix it right up there with GTO badges, tricoloured Ms, GT-R with the R painted red, and so on.

And since we don't have the NSX any more, nor the S2000, I'm more than alittle excited at the arrival of the GCCspec Civic Type R.

Honda needed something. Anything. You walk into the showroom and you see a dozen bone-stock Civics, five Accords, the ageing CR-V and that brick that is the Pilot. Wow. In terms of excitement, it's like going broom-shopping with your wife. And this from a manufacturer whose history is steeped in motorsport — in both two-wheel and four-wheel form — and whose performance cars revved almost as high as their bikes.

Soichiro Honda famously said that "racing improves the breed." He also said that if Honda doesn't race, there is no Honda.

A Honda showroom without a Type R spinning on a pedestal is the same thingas a BMW showroom without anyinline-six rear-drivers.

So this is Honda GCC's new halo car. The company doesn't care how many it sells — it won't be many, they're all manuals — and rightly so. It's a matter of principle.

The Civic Type R is here to demonstrate what an eight-thousand red line feels like, what it's like to stick to the back of rear-wheel drive sportscar in the Harra mountain passes despite having no torque to speak of, and what steering feel and chassis balance really should mean.

After the pick up, all I could get timefor was a quick drive back home and a prod at the plastics here and there, a kick of the tyres… Waking up before the roosters would give me plenty of time to experience the car in its natural habitat - on roadsthat twist tighter than a RomanianOlympic gymnast.

Jebel Hafeet? Nah. Too obvious, too choked with traffic and too well branded into my brain. Hafeet's corners are all very geometric — perfect half-circles, perfect 90-degree bends — which means they don't have any tightening or opening radii to really assess a car's chassis set-up. Most importantly though, I didn't think it would be fair on the normally-aspirated Hondato muck about 1,000m above sea level, where its horsepower losses due to the thin air at that sort of altitude would amount to anything between 15 and 25bhp — not cool when you have 198bhp to play with. I know that doesn't sound like much, because in Europe the Ford Focus RS can be had with either 301 or 345bhp and the new Renaultsport Megane has 247bhp. But with the Type R it's the overall experience that makes it a formidable hot hatch force.

Also, were I to take it to that steep climb above Al Ain, I'd need torque to get me out of a sticky situation, such as a miss-shift. And with 193Nm, torque isn't the Type R's strong point.

So we went to Harra and our favourite driving road in the UAE, the little stretch between Hatta and Huwaylat, climbing and then severely dropping again constantly, incorporating every imaginable camber and angle, not to mention a few surface changes and slippery wadis.

That's where the Type R's strong point shines; its delectable chassis and suspension set-up. I don't care that this generation Type R doesn't have a fully independent rear end, because the current layout with coil-springs and an anti-roll bar tracks the MacPherson front-endwith amazing intuition. It helps that the fuel tank sits in the middle too, lowering the centre of gravity and balancing theweight better.

The six-speed manual gearbox, too, is slicker than a Ricky Martin haircut. And it needs to be to get the most out of the iVtec — its clever ECU gives the cams a Jekyll and Hyde character. When you stomp your foot and downshift (at least twice) the red needle shoots up to the eight grand mark in an instant, bouncing off the rev-limiter as the Bridgestones grip like hawk claws into the tarmac. Understeer only raises its ugly head in severe hairpins, which is irrelevant because through mid and high-speed corners the Type R darts left and rightwith the agility of a lynx. It has a remarkable ability to turn fast essess into unassuming chicanes, allowing you to explore more of the Honda's gripping potential, its instantaneous turn-in and psychic lift-off oversteer.

The sublime engine furiously chases its redline constantly, unhappy with anything below 5,400rpm where it just about gets ready to play. With quick gearchanges and fancy footwork — the pedals are wonderfully sprung and spaced perfectly apart — you never need drop below 7,000rpm. Astonishing. And we didn't even get to the steering, communicated through a small-diameter, cowled piece linked through a rack and pinion — seriously, with this much steering feedback available, you'd think the geeks at Honda are somehow hacking into your brain.

But, is all that good enough? The Type R is here to take the crown. Our crown. The one on the Golf GTI's head — you know, the best hot hatch around.

The Volkwagen Golf GTI is a vastly different car, starting with its sublime turbocharged TSI powerplant. Although it is in reality remarkably quick despite its modest 207bhp (established tuners and VW itself can get above 260bhp from this 2.0-litre), the engine couldn't be more removed from the Vtec screamer. Butit still somehow manages to feel slowerdue to its relatively low turn-over speed. It's not slower though, because with traction control the GTI hits 100kph from rest in 6.9 seconds, whereas the Type R struggles to dip below the sevens, especially our low-mileage car. Honda claims 6.6 seconds, but I can't imagine how perfect the conditions have to be to match that sort of acceleration.

At legal speeds the GTI is tractable, refined, quiet and pulls in any of its six DSG gears thanks to its superior torque of 280Nm from as little as 1,800rpm. Chucking it around our ‘course', the way it pulls uphill (even coming out of a hairpin in third), it leaves the Type R for dead because we are still dealing with some altitude, although a lot less than we would on Jebel Hafeet.

Whether or not you play with the optional selectable chassis dynamics — in my opinion a waste of money, because of such minor damping differences between Normal, Comfort and Sport modes — the GTI rides with that typical German hot hatch firmness. The French make a superb chassis coupled with softly sprung suspension, while the Germans, and indeed the Japanese, seem to go rigid on everything. But even though the GTI sits on identical tyres to the Type R — Bridgestone 235/40 R18 — the Golf suffers from bump steer and tram-lines more than the Civic.

Handling can't be faulted though, andI'd go as far as to say that its chassis balance is as good as the Type R's, while the GTI's MacPherson front and four-link rear suspension make it just as predictable through these challenging, undulating corners.

Its steering is as well-weighted as the Honda's, although not communicative enough to match it, stopping just short of tapping into your thoughts like the Civic manages to.

With the tranny in its Sports setting, the little flaps behind the Golf's steering wheel (which are too flimsy and seriously lack feel, by the way) give you almost full control of the car's 6,250rpm range. The difference here is that in the GTI, you shift much less than in the Type R, and you use the torque to boost you into the next sequence of bends, the front end squatting and placing itself on the line with a minimal amount of work.

In the Honda, there's a lot more happening, more sweat on your brow, more leg and arm muscles being called to action, and a heck of a lot more heartbeats. It's dramatic, and even though the Golf can also oversteer on call during lift-off, the drama isn't there during a back-to-drive with the highly strung Type R.

Like I said, they're so vastly different.

Even one snoop around the exterior and interior tells you the same story. The Golf looks sober and sophisticated, having just a traditional red-stripes grille to signify its hot hatch character. The Type R is all in-your-face, with a huge wing blocking your rearward vision, triangular exhaust pipes, road-hugging front splitter, serious bucket seats and an aluminium gear knob and pedals. In the GTI, the dash sports better plastics, better leather and neater stitching. Aluminium is also used heftily, plus equipment levels in our nearly top-spec tester are vastly superior.

You get sat-nav with the best display in class, and the Civic doesn't even give you a central TFT, relying instead on two oddly placed screens to read out speed, radio and AC controls, plus the usual rev-counter in the middle. A Type R touch in the top left corner is a display to tell you when the cams are really on call, putting the iVtec technology into play.

On every level, the Golf is a better-built, better-engineered everyday car, offering smooth cruising and extremely low noise intrusion into the cabin.

The Dynaudio sound system and leather seats are another coup for the GTI, but then again it all does come at a premium — Dh129,000 to be exact, versus the Dh109,999 that Honda can sell you aType R for at a discount currently.

Yet, should you spec your GTI with two doors, tartan cloth, standard audio without sat-nav and a manual transmission — to basically match the Civic's spec — you can have it for Dh105,000 or even dip further below that if you omit more options.

Verdict

No matter how many times I experience the Golf GTI, I'm always amazed at the achievement here — imagine what a mission it is to design a car so quick, so agile and yet so refined on the day-to-day grind. And then sell it everywhere, for reasonable money, taking into account running costs, servicing, insurance, reliability, economy, emissions… What a pain!

The Honda is just as economical as the Golf (but you'll probably cane it more often, so this is down to your driving style) and we can expect it to be bulletproof in terms of reliability.

But it's a pure hot hatch, through and through, no doubt about that. Its chassis dynamics, the phenomenal engine with 99bhp per litre, 1,301kg kerb weight (depending on spec, up to 100kg less than the GTI,) and the best gearbox in town make it a… sportscar basically. In the shape of a hatchback. Driving the front wheels. I know for a fact I could live with it day-to-day, but I suspect most people wouldn't pay the price of shifting gears non-stop, their ears buzzing from the iVtec drone, no way to see what's behind, compromised entry due to the high-bolstered bucket seats.

So now I'm afraid I have to be boring and end this with an anticlimax.

The Type R is the best hot hatch your money can buy in the GCC. The Golf GTI? Well, that's simply the best car your money can buy.

If you see what I mean.

Paradise road

We don't know why it took us so long to find this stretch of motoring gold, since we've been in this area a million times, but anyway, better late then never.

It's nestled between the E44 slicing through Hatta, and attaches this eastern town to a small hamlet called Huwaylat, before opening up and carrying on toT-bone the road to Kalba.

But really, the interesting bit is Hatta-Huwaylat; it's 100km away from Dubai, and the road itself is exactly 10km long, making for some easy average-speed calculations. Traffic is very mild, but do watch for the odd goat and army convoys which take forever to get through with their lumbering Hummer H1s.

Notable sections include the beginning climbing up to a series of switchbacks, with very little run-off… In fact no run-off, just a wall. Then there's the end section incorporating slippery wadis (be careful of rocks on the surface) and plenty of blind crests, including one that takes forever to conquer in the torque-less Type R.

It's wheels' paradise road.

Specs & rating: Civic Type R