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Great showing for the Civic Type R in this year's 2018 Road & Track Performance Car of the Year competition!
Full competition results: http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a13132962/2018-performance-car-of-the-year/
It’d be a lie to say that no one missed the old company vibe, the spirit of the Integra and the S2000. But good Lord, does the Type R hustle. And above all, it shares one thing with the cars of the old-school Big H: Calm and comfortable when you’re cruising, a firecracker when you lean into it. The taillights wag on trailed brake, and the Civic will launch over track curbs or road chuckholes with your foot to the floor, the helical limited-slip clawing away, the car not even remotely slowing down. Topping it all off, no Civic ever had a brake pedal this communicative or effective—the enormous Brembo calipers behind the front wheels virtually evaporate speed.
Alone in this group, the Honda begs you to get angry. But it’s also a fully finished piece, capable and resolved at once. “Magic,” Wolfkill said, “and the handling is standout.” Okulski was shocked: “No torque steer. How?”
You forgive the styling, that obnoxious wing, the gaudy interior. The Honda wants to be hammered on for days, and unlike with the Alfa or the Audi, you’re thrilled to comply. —Sam Smith
THE FINALISTS
And then there were four—the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE, Honda Civic Type R, Lexus LC 500, and McLaren 720S. You’d be hard-pressed to choose a broader-spectrum anti-biotic for creeping automotive disinterest, yet at the core, each of these cars expresses a similarly uncompromising approach to performance-focused engineering. They’re loaded with things that you only notice after long examination: the heavy-duty steering knuckles on the Civic, the combination knob/switch used by the Lexus to adjust the shocks and relax the stability control, the knee bolstering on the Camaro’s center console, the way the TFT dashboard on the McLaren Fosbury-flops out of the way for unimpeded vision on a racetrack. You can have opinions about the Civic’s aero package or the McLaren’s socketed headlamps, but you can’t say that our final four don’t bring their A game in nearly every aspect that matters to a driver.
In years past, the PCOTY voting process has taken as long as four hours, often laced with impassioned speeches, tense disagreements, and uncomfortable bouts of soul-searching. Not this time. A single round of discussion and voting took a fraction of that. Our eight editors each assigned a ranking to the finalists. The rankings were added and averaged to provide the final results. Only two cars received first-place votes, and the mathematical distance between each place turned out to be unequivocal.
The third spot goes to the Civic Type R. Let’s get the low points out of the way in a hurry: The engine rarely feels fast and never comes across as particularly furious, the steering can seem inert, and the visual package is, shall we say, controversial. Chilton was properly cutting: “Even if it was quicker than the AMG, I couldn’t forgive those fake bumper grilles.”
None of those problems will stop the Type R from sporting additional-dealer-markup stickers for some time to come, however, because this is a Honda truly worthy of the coveted red badge.
In a market segment where some competitors are gelded by crossover-grade all-wheel drive and a ’77 Cutlass Supreme’s worth of curb weight, the Civic shines despite, and by virtue of, its fealty to the original hot-hatch template. “It possesses the unique ability to be driven like a front-wheel-drive car when it’s convenient—back it into turns under trail braking to get it rotated—without suffering from typical front-drive hang-ups under acceleration,” said Wolfkill. And the almost cosplay-like dedication to Nineties Ginza chic, while not everyone’s taste, will create a lot of fanatics and inspire plenty of tattoos. Most important, it’s a reminder that Honda still cares about its enthusiast owners.
Wow! can you guys imagine the ADM now, that this article is out? 
