The hot hatchback remains one of the most popular
car types in the world, with buyers of all ages having learned to appreciate
everything it stands for. Now, if you like your hot hatch to be both Japanese as well as iconic,
your only solution for the 2020MY is the Honda Civic Type R, as the Mazdaspeed3
(aka Mazda3 MPS) was decommissioned back in 2013, and fast Imprezas have been
stuck with four-door body styles for a while.
Yet, that hasn’t stopped Honda’s Product Engineering
department in the UK from coming up with a surprisingly utilitarian Civic Type
R, dubbed ‘Project P’. Unveiled last year, the Project P is based on a
pre-production Type R and, as you can see, it’s missing its C-pillars and half
of its roof.
Thanks to a Redditor with the user name zapperkp, we
caught a glimpse of the Project P in a parking lot under natural lighting –
unlike last year’s images which were all studio shots. The rear seats have been ditched
in favor of a truck bed, although the Type R’s aggressive-looking body kit has
been retained, along with the massive rear wing.
Also unchanged is the power unit and gearbox combo,
with Honda estimating that the Project P can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in under 6 seconds and max out at more than 265 km/h.
