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Hot hatches. There's the sublime and the ridiculous; and the downright lunacy of the Honda Civic Type-R. It looks like a car from the future and goes like one too.

Stuart Milne has spent a week and six hundred miles with one – mostly revving it to a stratospheric 8,000rpm

Last year I bought a new house. This year means decorating – and tackling the kitchen.

So for the last few weekends, I could be seen wandering around all manner of kitchen supply emporiums and deliberating over catalogues of cupboards and handles.

And it's just struck me quite how similar most kitchens are.

There's the old-fashioned cottage style stuff, complete with an enormous Aga; normal formica jobbies with trendy door knobs. And there's the ultra modern, minimalist bare aluminium kitchens – like the lead character's one in the film American Psycho.

The same can be applied to hot hatches. There's the traditional Golf GTi, the popularist Focus ST and the Civic Type-R which oozes modernity and technology.

And it’s the latter I've spent the past week with.

At first I was unsure about the crazy styling – its pure concept car, while its rivals are generally quite conservative – but I've warmed to it, and I can't quite resist sneaking a peek out of the window to look at the angular masterpiece on the driveway.

Sure, there are things I've struggled with; like I would with scratch-prone aluminium kitchen surfaces. Things like the thick spoiler running across the rear window, obliterating any vision I may have had out of the back.

But that hasn't really been of much concern. I've spent most of the week travelling forwards rather quickly.

That's got lots to do with the state-of-the-art engine nestled under the bonnet.

It does away with turbocharging like its rivals from Ford, Volkswagen, Mazda and Seat because it's got Honda's own i-VTEC system.

This is an acronym for sit down, shut up and hold on.

The revvy nature of the i-VTEC powerplant means the engine won't stop spinning until it hits its 8,000rpm redline, and only really comes alive above 5,400rpm when most other engines start to beg for a gearchange.

Honda's boffins worked out a way to change the egg-shaped bits of the engine's cam (that's the bit which changes the up and down movement of the pistons into a round and round motion to drive the wheels). This means the car is driveable at low speeds, turning into a mentalist when it gets faster. Check out the video below for a video clip explaining it all further.

In practice this means you'll need to thrash it in first to get the Type-R into 'The Zone', and keep stirring the six-speed manual gearbox to keep it there. Fortunately shifting gear on the redline drops the revs in the next gear to the start of the VTEC madness so you can do it all over again.

The problem is, while rapid progress can be made in a turbo'd Focus or Golf without revving the wheel nuts off them, the Civic is the opposite – and that's fun for a while, but from time to time, you may need to drive sensibly. When mum's in the car, for example.

But who wants sensible in a car like a Civic Type-R? Not me.

So what'll this wild machine set you back? New, standard Type-Rs start around £17,000, with the better-specced GT model I drove costing another grand or two.

But its boxier predecessor starts around £6,000 – and that's a bit of a bargain.

Now, where's that Wickes brochure?

L.A.T.W.O.T. Video of the Week

Ever wondered how Honda's VTEC engine works? Wonder no more…

 

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