[-=Stella Artois=-]

Originally Posted by ChillTypeR

Living with it

You must take a test drive, to see if the ‘snake-hips’ seats and racing-car ride are viable for everyday use. And you have to be quite determined to wring the best out of it – most of the power arrives only at very high revs, so if you’re used to a more lazy style of driving it might become irritating.
What’s more, despite the presence of a six-speed manual gearbox, cruising revs are too high so there’s a lot of engine noise on motorway runs. Relaxing it isn’t, although quick gearshifts are made easy by the handy dashboard-positioning of the gear lever.
The steering is very positive and unusually highly-geared (small turns deliver significant changes of direction), giving it a fairly meaty feel – reinforcing the ‘racetrack’ feel of the Type R.
In the right conditions, this Civic is a seriously quick car – but it demands single-minded concentration to ensure you’re in the right gear. This applies when overtaking, too – your instinct is to drop one gear, but in many cases you need to shift down twice.
According to our 2007 Which? Car survey, the British-built Civic isn’t the paragon of reliability we’ve come to expect from Honda. So far, owners have reported problems with the fuel system, steering, suspension and exterior trim. Furthermore, the Civic achieved only four out of five stars in its Euro NCAP occupant protection crash test – the Golf and the Astra achieved the full five-star rating, while the Mazda also scored four.
And the Type R seats only four people – there’s no central rear seat belt, so don’t expect to give any more than three people a lift. The folding seats don’t feature the clever drop-tilt mechanism (‘Magic Seat’ as Honda calls it) found on the five-door car, but the 485-litre boot capacity is still quite impressive for such a sporty car.

That reviewer should have actually driven the car. As he's describing an EP3. ******.......