There looks to be a new Honda coupe out testing in the wild, and the good folks at CivicX.com managed to snap a good collection of photos for the rest of us. But, while there isn’t much covering the design and this sure looks like a new Honda Civic Si coupe, the true question remains—when will America get its Type-R?
The sportier accents and interior stitching lend themselves to making this the Si, which is what CivicX.com claims it to be as well. The reason that the high-performance Type-R comes into the mix, really, is due to the fact that Honda promised America one—likely for the 2017 of 2018 model year. The Si has long been America’s sport version of the car, but the Type-R is the true beast of the bunch. That’s why U.S. availability is such a big deal, and the car will hopefully be a lot wilder than this tester above.
This particular test mule is a six-speed manual, as the interior shots show. The car doesn’t have any Si badges visible in the photos, but CivicX.com had several stats on the upcoming Si coupe apparently shown above:
Major changes are visible in this 2017 Civic Si prototype with a wide center rear exhaust pipe similar to that seen on the 2016 Civic Coupe Concept unveiled at the 2015 New York Auto Show.
The prototype also shows a taped-off rear lower bumper/diffuser area signaling that there could be aesthetic or functional differences between the Si and standard Civic X models, with perhaps a tamer version of the aggressive central exhaust found on the Civic Concept.
The website also said that the car “will likely feature a detuned version of the Civic Type-R’s 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder” in the range of 220 to 230 horsepower, with a potential auto-show debut later this year.
The Civic concept car mentioned above was a mean one, and this car is a lot more docile. There are a lot of photos CivicX.com, if you’d like to see more.