I love the Honda Civic Type R. This shouldn’t really be news to anyone who’s ever read anything else I’ve ever written on the topic, but I’m a big fan of Honda’s hottest of hatches. I like them enough that I would even consider owning one, and it’s so rarely worth owning a car in Brooklyn. But something keeps preventing me from ever putting cash down: Used Civic Type Rs cost too damn much.
The current FL5 generation, sure, I understand those being expensive. It hasn’t been around all that long, and many people prefer its subtler looks to the more aggressive styling of the previous-gen FK8. I, though, thoroughly enjoy the FK8’s driving dynamics at legal speeds, and I honestly think its looks have aged gracefully since the days when it was decried as looking like a Gundam (as if that’s somehow bad). I’d love to get my hands on the older car, but they’re still tough to find under $30,000.
I’d ask why so many of these are wrecked, but that’s not really a hard question to answer
Every Type R I see out there is one of two things: Over $30,000, or in some way wrecked. So many of these cars come with salvage or rebuilt titles, with nearly every one claiming to be a theft recovery and absolutely definitely not a chassis that was twisted to all hell after a driver tried to drift their front-wheel-drive Civic and ended up understeering into a street lamp. Maybe the sheer number of wrecked cars is artificially boosting prices of the good ones, constraining their supply, but still — 30 grand? For a nine-year-old Civic?
As a car journalist, I would very much like a Civic Type R. As a car journalist, though, my $65,000 salary isn’t covering a $30,000 decade-old Civic any time soon — especially not while New York City rents are what they are. My dream of a gracefully-aging FK8 seems forever out of reach, but maybe someday I’ll get to own one of these fantastic hot hatches. Preferably in yellow.
