On the road: Honda Civic Type R – car review

'It is insanely powerful. I felt like the Hulk bursting out of his shirt'

In my day, a Honda Civic looked like the car you would drive if you were going on an IT training course in Milton Keynes and wanted to fit in: reliable, characterless, neither large nor small, fast nor slow. At some point in the intervening decade, the designers or maybe the entire Honda brand have had a midlife crisis.

If I utter the phrase "black with red detailing", you'll think you know what I mean; you do not. The body looks like a Batmobile. The wheels look as though they were deliberately conceived as fresh wounds - a kind of Bruce Willis-esque aesthetic statement: "I'm so hard I haven't even noticed I'm bleeding." There is a spoiler at the back so substantial and proud that it would only really make sense if this vehicle could fly.