IT TOOK FIFTEEN YEARS.
BUT THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER.
AND IT WAS WORTH EVERY SINGLE SECOND.....

IS HERE !

Honda's Type-R history 'officially' began in 1992 with the launch of the NSX-R. But it was really in 1995 that the Type-R legend was fully entrenched, when the legendary DC2 Integra Type-R was launched. The world was never quite the same since then...

Befittingly, the Integra Type-R or DC2-R as Honda fanatics calls it, quickly established itself and the Type-R reputation in the motoring world. Six years after Honda shocked the world with VTEC, the DC2-R came and established the fact that Honda's relatively affordable lightweight 'sport-coupes' now possesses enough outright performance to seriously challenge many 'performance-cars'.

The DC2-R was quickly followed by many more Honda Type-R models. 1999 saw the launch of its 'little brother', the 1.6l EK9 Civic Type-R. The new millenium welcomed the DC5 and EP3, the second generations of these two great models. Meanwhile the Accord too received the 'R treatment', initiated from Europe and receiving the 'Euro-R' badge in Japan.

Sadly, it was only frustrated drooling for Honda's most fanatical supporters and especially their Type-R fans who are outside of Japan. While the Type-R brought unprecedented respect for Honda's technological prowness, for reasons never fully understood, Honda themselves have stubbornly insisted on keeping these engineering marvels from their most hard-core of fans outside of Japan. The original DC2-R did spawn a relatively good 'export version' for outside of Japan. But after that, Honda simply refused to allow their fans outside of Japan to get access to this wonderful model. In its place, they offered de-tuned and de-spec'ed versions, sometimes labelled as a 'Type-R', often as something else. It was a stubborn silliness that Honda's hard-core fans never could understand and in truth it eventually even started to bring about feelings of antagonistism and anti-sentiments, that Honda is just not bothered with their many hard-core fanatical fans.

From my close dealings with Honda since the previous millenium, I know this is very far from the truth - as far as Honda marketing is concerned. As a self-confessed 'greatest hard-core Honda fanatic' in the world, I was always extremely vocal in my message to Honda that they need to bring their Type-Rs to those of us outside of Japan. And the Honda marketing people I have dealt with at least have always been completely supportive of this idea. Unfortunately, support for their efforts have always been short in coming. Over the years, Honda R&D continued to simply ignore and pretended that 'export models' which they deemed 'sufficient' for the enthusiasts should be used and their precious Type-Rs be kept to japanese domestic only.

But finally, after so many years of trying and working by some extremely dedicated Honda marketing folks, the 'mission' has been acheived. On August 2nd 2007, Honda Malaysia delivered on their promise and made history for this new millenium by bringing in for local domestic sales, the original JDM-spec FD2 Civic Type-R ! It is a tremendous acheivement, a long mission over many years spanning no less than 3 Honda Malaysia C.E.O.s and with numerous dedicated marketing staff spending countless sleepless nights agonizing over logistics and details. But the end result was well worth it. Finally, we hard-core fanatic enthusiasts outside of Japan can enjoy an original JDM Type-R model in its full glory. I am sure the Honda enthusiasts world will never be the same again after this momentous occasion.

The FD2 Civic Type R is Launched !

This article is supposed to be coverage of the launch event. But that event is over a month old by now. In any case, more important is the fact that I am sure TOVA readers already knows everything about the JDM Civic Type-R, as it is packaged in Japan for the JDM. So how meaningful would a standard coverage be ? I really don't see any point in repeating the engine codes and max power ratings or how the Civic Type-R is designed to epitomize Honda's racing legacy.... It'll just be copying from the press release and brochures - and telling TOVA readers what they already knows by heart. Of course we do have in-depth technical coverage of the FD2 Civic Type-R, in our special technical overview series. The technical overview of the K20A-R engine for e.g. was published right at the beginning of August and was actually timed to coincide with the actual launch event. I had already knew the launch date way before the official invitations went out but I was adamant I would keep my promise of secrecy no matter how much 'mileage' a 'scoop' of the launch date would have brought to TOVA.

There are also more technical coverages planned for the rest of the car, including the much ignored but excellent Civic Hybrid that shared the stage with the Civic Type-R in the launch. But for the purpose of this article, I thought it would be more interesting for TOVA readers to read about some of the relatively unknown little facts, the 'trivias' so to speak, about Honda Malaysia's meticulous work in getting the FD2 Civic Type-R for sale in the Malaysian Domestic Market. To me, it is a story well worth telling and a story I hope readers will find well worth reading.

The Long and Winding Road....

For many years and over 3 M.D.s, TOVA has been recognized by Honda Malaysia as the media source representing the Honda enthusiasts here in Malaysia as well as the rest of Asia. For the case of this Civic Type-R launch, I have been closely following the effort and am even actually been involved in it in many ways, but which for reasons of confidentiality I have never talked about in the past. But with the car finally here, in this article, I can talk a little bit about that involvement.

Ever since Honda Malaysia set up office here in Malaysia, their product planning staff have always been interested in the possibility of launching performance models for the Malaysia domestic market. They recognized that Honda holds a very strong and loyal fan-base here in Malaysia and across Asia as a whole. So they have always been eager to acknowledge this fan-base by introducing a performance model. The special edition Civic RX and RX-2s were the earliest attempts in doing this, making do with whatever is available at that time. They were met with great success.

In late 2003 a series of events happened, which were not generally known by outsiders. At that time, Honda Malaysia almost launched the DC5 Integra "Type-R" here in Malaysia, a direct result of the efforts to launch an outright performance model for Malaysia instead of just doing special editions. The introduction of the MME DC5 Integra Type-Rs which Honda Malaysia entered and won Class-A of the 2003 Merdeka Millenium Endurance 12-hours race was not just an isolated incident. It was really planned to be the prelude to the actual launch of the DC5 Integra Type-R for Malaysia. The MME of 2003 was followed by the KLIMS 2003 (Kuala Lumpur International Motor Show) a few months later. So the plan was supposed to be to introduce the MME DC5-Rs, race them in the 2003 MME, try to win Class A (which they did with ease) and then to complete the marketing scoop by launching the 'race winning class A champion' DC5 Integra Type-R for Malaysia at the KLIMS itself.

Unfortunately fate had a rather different idea for this plan. After the MME win, the plan was going along quite far, to the stage where the actual selling price were already set. Until the crucial question was raised. Honda R&D approved and allocated the DC5 Integra 'Type-R' for Malaysia but then exactly which spec was it ? The thing was Australia and New Zealand at the time also had DC5 Integra Type-Rs in their market, but those units were detuned and de-spec'ed units specially for the export market. While the cars are still quite interesting, they were missing several crucial things, like the helical LSDs and the BREMBO brakes for e.g. When Honda Malaysia sought clarification, it was found that the units they were allocated are actually the Australian/New Zealand spec'ed DC5-Rs. Hard debate went on inside Honda Malaysia and eventually the tough decision was made to cancel the plan. It was decided that either they sell the original JDM-spec DC5Rs or they don't sell at all. Thus the launch of the DC5-R for Malaysia was cancelled, virtually at the last minute. This then was why the Honda Malaysia booth for the KLIMS 2003 was so big but so empty. It was supposed to be a big moment, the launch of the DC5-R but it was never meant to be. Honda Malaysia subsequently put in a formal request for the JDM-Spec DC5-R for Malaysia, a request that was accepted by Honda R&D but eventually rejected as being 'not feasible'. This then is also the reason why there is a white DC5 with Type-R body in the Honda Malaysia marketing office at P.J. It was the car brought in during the effort and this unit is an Australian version DC5 Integra 'Type-R'.

The next milestone to the CTR story came in 2004, during the Formula-1 race at Sepang. I was the guest of Honda Malaysia, at the grandstand when Mr Takeo Fukui who was visiting the Honda F1 team then, came over to the grandstand as well. I was given the golden opportunity to meet the great man and as is well known to TOVA readers by now, I grabbed the chance to pass to the great man, perhaps the most important message of all. From my actions on that fateful day, Kuraishi-san, who was the Honda Malaysia C.E.O. at that time asked Fukui-san for his support to go ahead with efforts to bring JDM Type-Rs to Malaysia. Which Fukui-san answered to the affirmative. He then set things in motion. Between the Integra and Civic Type-Rs, Honda Malaysia decided to go for the Civic Type-R, in order to complement the regular Civic line-up already being marketed. As the 7G Civic was nearing its end of life at that time, Honda Malaysia decided to wait for the new 8G Civic for their Type-R project. At that time, it was already known that the 'new' 8G Civic Type-R would be a sedan and so would have a greater chance of success as the ASEAN and Asia market in general has a strong bias towards 4-door sedans.

There was a period of limbo after that. While I was always checking up on progress, understandbly Honda Malaysia's marketing staff could not tell me much because such matters are of course confidential. So eventhough I was motoring media and I also represented their most hardcore customers and fans, I was still not a staff and therefore, a lot of information were not allowed to be diverged to me. Eventually I got the dissappointing information, that Honda R&D had again rejected the request to be allowed to market the new 8G Civic Type-R in Malaysia.

During the media test-drive event for the new 8G Civic early last year, I raised a question to the Civic LPL during the Q&A session. The Civic 2.0S was identified as 'the' model designed by Honda R&D to meet the needs of Honda enthusiasts in Asia. So I asked the rather blunt question : Why did you go only half the way ? The basis of the question was that while the Civic 2.0S had many items of interest to us hard-core enthusiasts, ultimately it was still overly compromised for practicality and we still desire more outright power, a manual transmission, in short simply more performance. I was not sure how the LPL took it but he responded with a 'maybe you can help us by telling us how to meet the Civic-fans expectations better.' That was when I actually pointed to the Civic Si sedan that was (at that time) to be unveiled in the U.S. soon and simply said that it would be the minimum that we will accept. I am not sure whether this fateful exchange had any big impact on the Civic Type-R effort for Malaysia but I like to believe it had at least a little. Eventually I was told that Honda Malaysia decided not to go for the Civic Si sedan but that if they want a performance Civic variant for Malaysia, then it would be the JDM FD2 Civic Type-R or nothing.

It was a roller-coaster ride for Honda Malaysia's effort after that and for some time, I was told that the effort was threatening to become a 'nothing'. Honda R&D was just not convinced that any country outside Japan, what more a small ASEAN country had a legitimate requirement for a JDM-spec Type-R model (any Type-R model). I understand that relations were even slightly strained as a result of Honda Malaysia's push for the FD2-R for Malaysia. But really I was not privy to much of the developments that were going on in Honda Malaysia and all I could get was a 'we are still trying' answer. So I had almost given up then. That was the middle of last year.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

As they say, if one is persistent, and pure in his intentions, good things have a nice way of happening, and often without warning. Such was the persistence of the Honda Malaysia staff whom were pushing for the CTR sales. In late 2006, out of the blue, I got a call from Honda Malaysia asking me for a favour. It seems that they were given instructions to conduct a market survey for the CTR for Malaysia. 'Could I gather at least 5 original Type-R owners (any model but must be original Type-Rs, not converts) to take part in a private and confidential survey ?' I was asked. The request did came at the very last minute and the other problem was that it needed to be held on a working week-day. I contacted over 15 Type-R owners, TOVA readers, personal friends and even friends of friends of friends ! Many of them couldn't make it, a number were from out-of-town, some had to go out-of-town and a couple even had to go overseas. But six of them could and it was still one respondent more than what Honda Malaysia had originally hoped for, from such a late notice. I understand that that survey was to be instrumental in the FD2-R for Malaysia effort. Subsequently, I learned that the motivation for that survey was that Honda R&D had requested that Honda Malaysia be completely thorough in their market research before they can further seriously consider the case for the JDM-spec FD2-R for Malaysia.

Subsequently following this survey, a Honda Malaysia staff visited the Honda R&D HQ in Japan for further talks and came back with a list of follow-up items. There were a lot of items - I was told the total number filled three pages of A4 paper ! The list was filled with things, some of which might even be considered trivial, but still held to be important by Honda R&D. These are things like the information stickers on the car, the frequency for the wireless ECU immbolizer, ensuring the alarm system will be Tatcham-5 certified, the spare tyre inflator, and so forth. It was truly a great testimonial to the many Honda Malaysia staff that they continued to persist with their fight for the FD2-R case even when faced with such difficulties thrown in their path. Really, any lesser people would simply have packed up and focus on much easier and much less stressful models. Why bother with so much obstacles and troubles, just for the small, nicle market of the Honda enthusiasts ? But they didn't give up and they continued to push.

In the meantime, Honda Malaysia launched the Limited edition Mugen Civic in conjunction with the Honda Owner Clubs Visit to the Honda Malaysia Plant that I organised on November 2006. For this special edition, original Mugen Civic bodykits and 'sport rims' were imported from Japan and installed on the Civic 2.0S complete with a new body color and then offered as the 'Limited Edition Mugen Civic'. There was a problem with this car however and that was its price. Due to the extremely high import duties levied on after-market parts, the car would be sold at over RM25k (~USD 7k) more than the standard Civic 2.0S. Immediately after the launch, there were concerns as sales were sluggish. But that was simply due to timing as the car was introduced towards the end of the year and the Malaysian market shows sluggish car sales towards year end. When 2007 came, within a lightning quick period, all the units were simply snapped up. Some dealers were actually even complaining about lack of units to sell ! This gave Honda Malaysia much needed new encouragement, and a new bullet with which to bring to Honda R&D. If Honda fanatics are willing to pay so much more (over RM25k !) for 'just' a Civic with Mugen bodykit and wheels, they will be more than willing to pay for the Civic Type-R.

The general tone from early this year onwards was a lot more positive as the feedback to me in Honda Malaysia events were more positive 'things are moving along....'. The next milestone as I understood happened in the background. One of the Honda R&D staff visited Malaysia, to take a look at the actual market conditions here. Very fortunately it also coincided with Honda Malaysia's test of the FD2R at the Sepang circuit, in preparation for the 2007 MME. This happened early this year. After Honda Malaysia pulled out all the stops for the visit, the Honda R&D engineer, whom was responsible for overall development of the K20A-R engine for the FD2-R was convinced. His message to Honda Malaysia was that he will go back to R&D HQ and he will put in his formal recommendation for the FD2R launch to go ahead !

At the SUPER-GT party held on June of this year, I was met with a smiling Honda Malaysia head product planner, who gave me a simple message. 'it's a GO !'. Thus the long and extremely bumpy road to getting the JDM-spec FD2 Civic Type-R for Malaysia has finally turned into a reality. The marketing plan, which went without any hitch, was to launch the FD2 Civic Type-R for Malaysia earlier and just in time for it to make an impact on the market before Honda Malaysia officially reveals that they will also be racing a JDM Spec Civic Type-R in the 2007 MME. Again the hope was to win Class A, which will then help considerably in establishing the desirability of the FD2 Civic Type-R for Honda's fanatics. This again was acheived easily. Thus the legend of the FD2 Civic Type-R is firmly established.

For the official launch of the FD2 Civic Type-R, on August 2nd 2007, Honda Malaysia's Customer Communications Department (CCD) organized a special preview night for Honda enthusiasts and asked me to help organize for a group of Honda clubs members to attend the special preview. I was asked to invite the six respondents in the 2006 Type-R owners survey to the preview as well. While two of them were out of the country, the other four gleefully accepted the invitation. In total 120 Honda enthusiasts and fanatics attended the event. At the night of that launch, I was told by the Honda Malaysia marketing staff that while they actually ordered thirty units of the CTR, hoping to sell most of them by the end of this year - in actual fact all thirty were already sold at the day of the launch itself. This then is the hard-core Honda fanatics in Malaysia for you !

Trivia Time

Having have told the rather long story, there are now also some (what I feel) interesting tit-bits of information about the car itself that maybe readers might be interested to know about as well.

The 'Malaysian Domestic Market' (MDM) FD2 Civic Type-R is completely JDM-Spec, meaning the cars are manufactured on the same production line at Honda's SUZUKA plant in Japan, exactly the same as the JDM units and were actually originally meant for the JDM but now nicely 'hijacked' off for eager and appreciative owners in Malaysia. Nevertheless, the cars are not totally 100% JDM units. In terms of technical specifications, they are completely identical to the JDM version. But the car as a whole, is not. The answer to this apparent contradiction is simply that one of the conditions set by Honda R&D for the JDM cars to be sold in Malaysia is that the cars must also be 'localized' to some extent. These are minor but important (to Honda R&D) details like the various technical infor stickers that one finds on their cars, e.g. the tyre pressure information sticker at the driver's side door-sill. The JDM-Spec FD2 CTRs sold in Japan have these stickers written in japanese. For Malaysia, Honda R&D's requirement is that equivalent English-languaged stickers be made and put in their place. So Honda Malaysia had to specially get these stickers translated and printed for the Malaysian CTRs.

There are other small details that Honda Malaysia's marketing folks had to work on as well. The FD2 CTR does not use a spare tyre for e.g. Instead, the rear boot spare tyre well is fitted with a tool kit, which includes a tyre puncture repair can and a car-battery operated air-pump, for on the spot repair of tyre punctures and subsequent refill. This kit too had some local customization.

Other areas where the Malaysian market JDM-Spec CTR differs from the Japanese market JDM-Spec CTRs are in the accessories. The Malaysian units are ordered more or less bare (more on this later) which means the cars comes without a car stereo and other niceties like reverse sensors. However, the local government regulations is that a car stereo is one of the 'mandatory' accessories for any car sold in the local market (for official imports, not the unofficial parallel importers). So Honda Malaysia will retrofit a car stereo into their units after they have arrived at Port Klang (the port of import). An interesting annecdote about this car stereo. The Honda Malaysia staff in charge of accessories had asked me about how I think potential buyers would view Honda Malaysia if they had actually managed to get permission to sell the car without a car stereo. Being a hard-core, I of course told him that it was no problem, in fact maybe even contribute to the desireablity of the car, being hard-core and all that. But I then raised the issue of a car stereo being a mandatory accessory. He confirmed that they failed to get permission to leave out the car stereo and so he spent quite a bit of time selecting a car stereo he feels is fitting to the CTR. Regular Civics sold by Honda Malaysia uses KENWOOD stereos but he opted for units from ALPINE for the CTR. He told me one of the reasons for selecting the ALPINE was simply that the ALPINE's wordings on the LCD display is using the same TONE OF RED as the interior of the CTR ! This tells a lot about the level of attention to detail that Honda Malaysia put into the Civic Type-R.

Another noteworthy item on the Malaysian CTR is the floor matts. The CTR comes in Japan bare, meaning without floor matts. Those great looking high quality red floor matts with TYPE-R logos Malaysian buyers will get are actually optional accessories and Honda Malaysia paid a few hundred Malaysian ringgits for each set. I asked why they didn't just put the standard Civic matts onto the units and was told that they will look like 'cheapskates' for trying to save on minor things like a few hundred ringgits worth of original carpets. They also rejected the option of having locally embossed red matts made as they feel floor matts are an important part of the car and so they must be original items.

Finally, the other minor items on the Malaysian units that differs from the Japanese units will be the fitment of reverse sensors and car alarms (Honda used the same COBRA system as those of the standard Civics). A full range of security features are provided including motion and shock sensor. The Malaysian CTR security system is rated at Tatcham Level-5 level. BTW, a car alarm is also a mandatory accessory for Malaysian market cars. Then as mentioned above, the frequency for the ECU immoboliser system had to be selected for the local market.

As is well known by now, while the JDM FD2 Civic Type-R comes with several optional exterior and interior colour scheme, Honda Malaysia decided -rightfully- to adopt only 1 scheme for units sold here. Firstly is the decision that the Malaysian FD2 Civic Type-R are only available in the legendary NH-0 Championship Racing White exterior colour. Championship Racing White is considered by many hardcore Honda fans as being representative of 'the Type-R colour'. It was a colour adopted by Mr. Soichiro Honda for his first racing machines. Today, it was also used on Honda's Formula-1 cars before they adopted the 'earth-scheme' for this year. So to many Honda fanatics, especially the Type-R purists, a 'true' Type-R 'must' come in the NH-0 Championship Racing White colour. It is of course a rather extremist view but then, since when has a Honda fanatic been anything other than an extremist ?

For the interior, Honda Malaysia chose the dual-tone graphite-black/racing-red combination colour scheme. This is really a matter of compromise from Honda Malaysia as both colours have been widely associated with the Type-R previously so as some sort of 'middle-ground', the combination interior colour-scheme was chosen.

Press Conference and Some Important Questions Answered

Normally in the model launch press conference, I tend not to ask any questions. This is because the general type of questions asked during this press conference tends to gravitate towards those of a more general nature - how many units do you intend to sell (60 units a year), and so forth. So I usually reserve all my technical questions for the media test-drive event Q&A session, if only to avoid making a nuisance of myself during the launch press conference. For the FD2 Civic Type-R however, I decided to make an exception. Due to reasons of scheduling, the media test-drive event has been postphoned to a much later date so I decided that it is quite important to get some crucial questions answered right now. And that means breaking my practise and grabbing the mike.

The first question that I posted to the FD2 CTR's chief engineer was the issue about fuel requirement. In previous years, one of Honda R&D's 'excuses' for refusing requests to bring official JDM-spec Type-Rs outside of Japan for sale in individual countries (like the case of the JDM DC5-R for Malaysia way back in 2003) was that of fuel quality. JDM Type-Rs are spec'ed for RON-100 grade petrol/fuel. Generally this grade of petrol is not available in many countries outside of Japan, certainly not in any parts of ASEAN. In Malaysia, there are only 2 grades of petrol available at the pump : RON92 and RON97, both unleaded. Shell's V-Power Racing is widely said to be rated at RON98 but Shell themselves have never officially confirmed this. So the crucial question that needs to be answered here is Honda R&D's viewpoint of using RON97 unleaded petrol in the FD2 Civic Type-R, which is spec'ed for RON100 petrol. Honda R&D's response is that there is no problems with doing this. The K20A-R is equipped with knock sensors, so using RON97 petrol in the K20A-R engine will result in the ECU retarding the ignition timing to control detonation.

Beating me to the punch, someone quickly raised the question of whether the FD2 Civic Type-R will be producing less than its rated 225ps max power, when used with RON97 here in Malaysia. To this, Honda R&D replied in the positive but added that they do not expect the difference to be significant, or even noticeable. In any case, JDM-spec Type-Rs are pretty common here in Malaysia thanks to our liberal parallel import policies in the past. So there are plenty of JDM Type-R owners here in Malaysia - in fact, many of them are TOVA readers and supporters as well. All of these owners I have spoken to have never had any problems with using standard RON97 petrol on their Type-Rs (all models represented, DC2-R, EK9s, EP3-Rs, DC5-Rs, even the NSX and S2000). So RON97 grade petrol can safely be used on the FD2 Civic Type-R with little effect on outright max power from the engine.

Tying to this question would of course be the question to Honda R&D about their opinion on adding special 'octane booster' formulations to the petrol in order to raise its RON rating to near RON100. Malaysian Honda fanatics in general are familiar with octane boosters. I myself have ample experience with using three types on my Integra. I used Jungle Juice, a pure octane booster from the U.S. in the first few years after I had it turbo-charged. Later when HKS introduced their 'DHOB' (Drag High Octane Booster), I switched to it because DHOB came in convenient 1 litre cans which I can carry around whereas I had to get Jungle-Juice from 1 specific source immediately before I go for refuel at the station. HKS DHOB also had other additives which enables more efficient burning of the fuel. Eventually local company Aerotech came out with their own formulation called Afterburn which I have been using on an as-needed basis since (usually when I go for a drive in the Sepang circuit).

Surprisingly the R&D chief engineer acted as if he doesn't know what an octane booster is. After explaining, I then got the expected response that Honda R&D cannot determine how adding octane booster will affect the engine and that in general they discourage owners from adding any chemicals into the petrol used on their Hondas, Type-R or not.

The final question I asked was whether Honda Malaysia has any plans to offer Honda Access Modulo accessories for the FD2 Civic Type-R. Honda Malaysia officially introduced Modulo aftermarket accessories as approved 'modifications' for all their cars sold here in Malaysia, but only the Modulo bodykits. All models launched since then have always been offered with optional Modulo accessories, during their launch. Now, in Japan Honda Access Modulo actually offers some very nice accessories for the FD2 Civic Type-R - slotted brake discs, high-temperature brake pads, adjustable coil-overs, to list some !! It is almost a given that FD2 Civic Type-R owners will modify their cars, sooner or later. All of my closest Type-R friends are regular Sepang circuit visitors anyway. Honda Modulo accessories have two main attractions. One is that they are designed by Honda, to modify Honda cars. Secondly is that they themselves comes with the standard 3-years Honda warantty and also keeps the original 3-years warantty on the car itself intact. So it becomes an important question about what -if any- Modulo accessories Honda Malaysia will be introducing for the FD2 Civic Type-R. Dissapointingly, the response I got for this question was that Honda Malaysia do not have any plans to offer Modulo for the FD2 CTR.

Conclusion

While quietly confident that the FD2 Civic Type-R will be a great success here in Malaysia, I of course did not dare offer any 'guarantee' to the Honda Malaysia head product planner who was instrumental in bringing the car over here from Japan. Still, I have been giving him 'encouraging feedbacks' all the time. With the car finally officially launched, my silent confidence was quickly confirmed. The FD2 Civic Type-R is a complete success in Malaysia. Honda Malaysia's initial estimate was for total sales of 60 units a year or 5 units a month. They seriously thought that few people in Malaysia would be willing to pay almost RM200,000.00 (approx USD57,000 !!) for just a Civic. There were still a few who commented of course, but the true Honda Type-R fanatics came in doves. And they did not open their mouths, they just came, they saw, and they put their hard-earned money down ! At the time of finishing this article, I was told that total orders for the FD2 Civic Type-R, barely over a month after its official launch here in Malaysia, has exceeded 50 units ! The waiting period for delivery for new orders placed now exceeds six months and as it is, orders continue to be received daily.

Honda Malaysia is of course very pleased that their efforts and faith in trying to meet Honda enthusiast needs and wishes have been so well received. Eventually of course the latent demand for the FD2 Civic Type-R will dry up and sales should stabilize down to a more 'sane' level. But for now, the moment belongs to us, Honda enthusiasts and especially Type-R fanatics. I have been writing it for so many years now, even been questioned for my 'blind allegiance' to Honda by a few who insists that they 'know' Honda "don't care" about their fans. But finally I have been vindicated - my faith that Honda do care about its most important customers - their hardcore fans. Surely this is a proof that no-one else can question anymore.