When I was a teenager and the internet was sloooow as an 18-wheeler truck, being the brat I've always been, I experienced the wonderful world of internet porn in the soooo very sllllooooow picture loading anxiety way. One day, while waiting for a picture of naked girl, I was taking my time to appreciate things (no other way as the link was sllloooooow), the girl (so I though) in the picture was covering her face with "her" hair, then the silicone breats came up.. and right when I was so very interested in the remaining part of the picture... well you know what happened just by the "she-male picture effect" in the article title. It was discussing (not because I have anything against she-males) because I was really expecting something else.
Why oh why would I share this traumatic teenager experience (particularly in a car blog)? Well it happened again.
I was browsing magazines today and this came to my hand:
I was immediately excited (just like a teenager waiting for a naked women porn picture). I'm an former Honda lover, but lately Honda managed to do nothing but crap. I mean there is not a single car out of Honda since they stopped the JDM Civic Type-R production.
Every other manufacturer is trying their absolute best to build better cars and Honda managed to go the opposite way.
This Magazine was GREAT NEWS! FINALLY, one of the best brands in the world decided to wake-up from the prolonged coma. NSX was back, rumor of the S2000 replacement and a new Civic Type-R. Groooovy.
Immediately I skipped all the junk pages into the article, searched for the specs and found a chart of the new vs the old Civic Type-r specs. That was wonderful... a chart.
First line: new type-r - 300bhp, old type-r 200bhp (BRRRRIIILLLIANT!)
Second line : new type-r - 2000cc, old type-r 2000cc (yeeeahhhhhhh finally some racing specs for the road.)
Third line: new type-r - i-Vtec , old type-r i-Vtec (obviously... no need to mention this)
Than disaster on the Fourth line: new type-r - TURBO, old type-r N.A. (WTF?!)
I immediately dropped the magazine to the floor and almost cried in pain... and there you go-> The She-male effect.
This is the second time Honda kills the Type-r!!!
Mk1 was brilliant.
Mk2 was the best ever.
Than, for some reason, while producing Mk3, they decided that the JDM version should be better and the European version should have a cheaper (and worse) suspension and more weight!!! Weird at least.
Now with the Mk4... it's turbo.. I mean -cheap engineering instead of refinement, N.A. response...purity.. naaa just another 2.0 turbo to go after the RCZ, Sirocco and MeganeRS cheap trend.
If at least they had made it 4WD I would understand it... but no! Still FF. I can even say with no reserves that this car has been made to shut Renault up with their "Megan RS Trophy is the fastest FF in The Ring". According to some people from the R&D at Honda, they've done-it... but just like I hated the Megane for not being a pure driving machine... I'll also hate this one. Yes it's a record breaker...yes it's a bullet in the ring (where it was destined to perform)...but forget the refinement and driving experience...no room for those here.
Type-r is now the meaning for: just another engineer's wet dream.
So... Apparently the Megane RS has it's kingdom threatened (no surprise as an engine that revs to 6000 and produces little over 260bhp from 2 liters and a turbo is not a marvel of engineering)... and of course, just like Renault has F1 heritage to help build brilliant chassis, so does Honda...and they also have Indy, and BTCC and so on ... a brilliant FF chassis would come up eventually.
So this new Honda revs 2k beyond the Renault's limits, with better linearity and power delivery... and produces more power... give it a good chassis and you have a winner just on the 2k extra revs in the corners and the almost 40bhp in the straights!
But do I like it? No. It's FF instead of FR, It's turbo without being 4WD... and it was conceived following the EasyWay instead of the Hard-Engineering-and-true-Efficiency-seeking way.
Deception... pure deception. Hope that they remember the original S2000 and NSX on their new versions... or things will really get weird from now on.
