Honda Accord Type R

I like Hondas. High rev limits, over-engineering, some of the world’s best manual gearboxes and an insatiable desire from the design team to make the best driving car they can mean that Honda have made some of the most desirable and affordable performance cars ever built. Think generations of Civic Type-R, the CR-X, the NSX and the S2000. All of them utterly legendary cars and leaders in their fields for decades.

There is an odd one out though. For all of the inherent practicalities of a saloon and the driver focused ingredients that should make the Accord Type-R one of the all time Honda greats, it never shared the same mass following of the EP3 Civic that was around at the same time. It had Recaro bucket seats, a rev happy V-Tec engine mated to a sharp gearbox with a limited slip differential between the front wheels and double wishbone suspension on all four corners. Even Evo Magazine called it “one of the best front drivers of all time”, so why they aren’t praised by the masses like BMW’s 3 Series or Subaru’s many variations of Impreza is beyond me. There’s a fairly small dedicated following for them but not as much as you’d think given the make-up of the car.

I saw this one in an affluent area of Kensington, surrounded by Range Rovers, Porsches, BMWs and other modern and expensive machinery, so it was quite refreshing to stumble across this Accord. To most people it probably just looks like an old Honda with a silly spoiler on the back, but for those ‘in the know’ it’s a special sight. The owner clearly uses it for its practicalities too, as it had a bike rack on the roof which I find exceptionally cool.

In an age when your average fast and practical car is an overweight SUV with silly power being thrown at its wheels, it makes you realise how good cars really were 20 years ago. I don’t want to get wistful, but you can’t ignore the fact we had more manual gearboxes, more special engines (with a few exceptions), less weight, less electric motors, less unnecessary driver aids and just more fun cars. Sure, BMW M have their M3 and M5 and Mercedes AMG has the C63, but they’re super saloons on a whole different plane to the sports saloon. Given their current form, a modern Honda Accord Type R could be a phenomenal thing and it would be welcomed with open arms.