Over the holidays, editor-in-chief Ed Loh and his new wife, Julia, (aka J. Loh) took a drive north from our City of the Angels in the Civic Type R. From Los Angeles to Sacramento, to San Francisco, and returning to L.A., they covered over 900 miles in just three days. What were their impressions, especially to a CTR newbie?
“Julia started in it first and was surprised I had selected a manual for what could have been a brutal slog if we’d hit holiday traffic on I-5 and CA-99,” Ed confessed, “and indeed, we left L.A. at a suboptimal time on Saturday morning and got stuck in about an hour of stop ’n’ go.” No complaints about his choice of the DIY transmission, however. The clutch pedal is light, not springy, and provides an easy-to-learn bite point. Julia wasn’t a fan of the spherical, metal shift knob, however, as it was often cold and “too round” for her hand. What? Once out of the city, they both agreed that “the seats were not too sporty, the ride was not too stiff, and the exhaust note was not a droning drag unsuitable for a long road trip.” Julia loved the “zippiness” of the powertrain and “favorably compared the steering and general handling behavior to her Audi A3.”
Neither of them cared for the infotainment system. Besides the ever-absent volume knob, Ed discovered that with “the list of connected devices being ‘full,’ connecting her (and my) iPhone via USB cable to access Apple CarPlay necessitated pulling over and deleting a user first—each time, because the system doesn’t allow adding while the car is in motion. Never had that happen before, in any vehicle.” Honda’s lawyers are cruel. Most of the car’s settings can only be changed when the car is at a standstill.
At just 12.4 gallons, “the gas tank is also quite small,” Ed also noted. “When cruising on the highway, we could hit well over 250 miles per tank, but when rowing the lower gears, the mileage dropped below 200. This made for a bit of white-knuckling as we coasted into Ojai.” The running average between fill-ups is currently 220 miles, but all are below 11 gallons per fill.
Ed also got J. Loh’s dad, Bob, behind the wheel. Besides being “an especially keen car enthusiast” who’s owned over 80 vehicles, he’s also a retired U.S. Air Force pilot (KC-130 transports and F-111 fighter/bombers). We’ll share his impressions next time.
More on our long-term Civic Type R here:
- Arrival
- Update 1: Commuter Duty
- Update 2: Type R IRL
The post 2018 Honda Civic Type R Long-Term Update 3: J. Loh Approved, Mostly appeared first on Motortrend.