America finally gets Honda’s best: The 2018 Civic Type R

Type R-ism has long been vacant in the American car world. Used but once before, on the holy Acura Integra Type R (sold as a Honda in Europe and Asia), Honda has reserved its sharpest tools for other markets. But that stops now: the new Civic Type R is the very first Honda to wear the R badge in America, and it's here to fight its bigger and more established competitors. There's no mistaking how and where on the grand automotive scale the new Civic Type R is placed, even for the casual layperson. With a prominent splitter, wing, roof spoiler, air-channeling lumps and vents, and the curious three exhaust tips, it's replete with boy-racer visuals.

But this boy arrives with the right tools. Tucked under the cornucopia of aero and design appendages sit some drop-dead serious bits of hardware that check all the boxes. But there's a far more elusive and important box that this car manages to check-one of mechanical harmony.

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