Honda civic type r le for sale

I've never hidden my enthusiasm for the FK8 Honda Civic Type R. As I wrote when we covered its recent demise, the FK8 was a car that I knew, from the minute I first tested it at its launch in Germany, was going to be a hero a car. Something gratifyingly special. And so it transpired to be. It wiped the floor with everything around and, personally, if it were still on sale today, I'd pick it over a Toyota GR Yaris without a second thought.

I've never driven the FK8 Limited Edition, but from what I've read about it - and knowing what fine foundations it was built on - I can well imagine it's the daddy of the FK8 range. A Type R with added S T U V W X Y and definitely some Z thrown in for kicks and giggles. Honda made only 1,020 worldwide and of that number just 20 came to Blighty. All were Sunlight Yellow with gloss black detailing.

On top of the prescribed styling, Honda indulged a weight-loss programme that stripped away 47 kilogrammes. 20-inch forged BBS alloys removed 2.5 kilogrammes of un-sprung mass per corner, and they were shod with sticker Michelin Cup 2 tyres instead of the standard car's Continentals. Elswhere it removed the sound deadening from the bulkhead for a further 14 kilos, and deleting the air conditioning system which saved ten kilos. Five kilos were saved by doing away with the infotainment and that was a win-win. By not having an infotainment system, it instantly made the infotainment system better. That was the worst thing about the Civic; it reminded me of something you'd buy from Halfords to modernise a Nova.

Honda tweaked the gearbox but this was applied across the whole Type R range. It changed the shape of the aluminium gear knob and the shift quality - it became even sweeter. In my opinion, it became the best manual shift out there. Plus the steering was sharpened and the adaptive dampers recalibrated to the Limited Edition's newfound dexterity. What didn't change was the power and torque - but that was fine. The 2.0-litre turbocharged K20C1 was already mighty, and I don't recall anyone saying that its 320hp, or the V-TEC fizz that catapulted you towards 7,000rpm, was a let-down.

The Type R Limited Edition was just a fiver less than £40,000 and its nearest rival would have been the Renault Megane RS Trophy-R. That employed a similar philosophy of same power and less weight but went even further, by ditching the rear seats and employing an even more rigourous ride quality. If you specified one with the carbon wheels, you were looking at a bill for £70,000.

But by all accounts, the Type R Limited Edition was faster on track, still had its rear seats and a bewildering level of comfort. Which, of course, was the incredible thing about the FK8: it never seemed to be trying too hard. Just like Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, the speed came naturally. Yes, this one may seem steep at £59,995 plus VAT, but for a like-new example of such a low volume model which is no longer being made, there's arguably method in the madness. Especially when you factor in the idea that it will go down as one of the all-time great hot hatches.

An unused example of the ultimate FK8 Civic Type R achieved a truly ridiculous online auction result in the US

Remind me later

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The Honda Civic Type R Limited Edition is the ultimate road-going version of one of the best driving hot hatches in recent times. But when we drove both it and the most recent update of the FK8 Type R last year, we deemed the LE not quite different enough to warrant having hard feelings about missing out its small production run which sold out almost immediately.

With that in mind, we definitely don’t advocate spending over one hundred thousand dollars on a pretty much unused example, and yet someone did exactly that in the USA. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this happened via Bring a Trailer, a place where some users have a habit of getting carried away, as evidenced by the recent sale of a 400-mile Chevrolet Metro for $18,200.

As for the Type R, it has a little more going for it than the Metro. You’re looking at chassis number 001 of the 600 units sold in the USA, and it’s showing a mere six miles on the clock. US LEs weren’t lightened quite as drastically as the 100 European market cars, which had no air conditioning or infotainment systems, but the weight still went down by a decent 22.5kg.

A lot of that came from ditching the sound deadening, and further chunk was ditched via a switch to forged 20-inch BBS wheels. Remember - unsprung mass savings are much more valuable per kilo.

Those new BBS rims are wrapped in Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres. Fun fact - that R01 marking on the sidewalls of this car and other LEs we’ve seen denotes the boots as Audi OE tyres. Finishing off the exterior is Phoenix Yellow paint (also known as Sunlight Yellow), a hue Honda famously used on the Integra Type R and the EK9 Civic Type R.

What you should take from this is that the Limited Edition was tweaked, not fundamentally altered. Its original purchase price of $44,950 (£40,000) was bang on the money considering this. But more than twice that figure? Someone’s common sense has taken a leave of absence.

The auction ended a few days ago on $102,000, which works out as £76,000 going by current exchange rates. It’s worth pointing out that the US used car market is in a strange place right now, and on both sides of the pond, the discontinuation of the FK8 Type R thanks to Honda’s Swindon factory closure has led to higher demand. But that said, we can’t help but think this is more of a blip than a sign of things to come. At least, we hope that’s the case.

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