Previous to buying the type R I had a fiesta ST and was seeking something quicker, sportier but not a car that spent its life in the garage because it costs a fortune to run or it wasn't a practical everyday car.

I finalised my decision down to 3 cars:
---MK5 VW Golf GTI
---MK2 Ford Focus ST
---FN2 Honda Civic Type R GT

There were many reasons I went for the Civic over the others. This was made after weeks of reading reviews, test drives and my previous driving experience. Hopefully i shall cover some of my thought process to help others decide whether the Civic type R suites them...

The looks of the Civic are far more up to date and having studied Transport Design at uni I wanted something very concept car looking with unordinary form that I was pining for at that time. The Focus ST looks like the standard focus but with a cheap body kit glued on so that didn't fit the mould for me. The Golf didn't shine enough to stand out from the lower spec Golfs and still looked too 'boring' to say the least. Performance wise I thought that I had chosen the middle of the range killing the golf in all ways but struggling to match the torque and bhp of the focus. But once you know how to juice that i-vtec system many people have found it quicker on the straights as well as the corners than the ST. The focus struggles a lot from turbo lag in the summer which you won't find in the civic! Though there is a downside to there being no turbo/supercharger for all the people that love to 'mod' unfortunately Honda have really maxed out that engine and without a spare grand or so there isn't much more to be squeezed out unlike the engine in the Focus. That aside the comparison was between the initial factory spec.

Going back to Golf I found that it had a better electrical spec than the focus and held its money much better. But for the inital cost of the Golf compared to the Civic with similar spec i.e. buying the HST, SatNav Type R GT (which I went for) was considerably more I paid 11k for my Civic from Honda in 2010 for a GTI I was lucky to see a similar year with the same spec for under 14k private.

The final thing that did it for me was the Civic can meet its quoted 31mpg fairly easily if you keep out of the i-vtec 'mode' unlike the 30mpg of the Focus which is more like 26mpg if your lucky.