Honda Integra Type R DC2

Honda Integra Type R (DC2): the front-driver everyone else gets measured against

The B18C: two hundred screaming horses that live up at eight grand

Ask a room full of Honda people to name the best front-wheel-drive car ever built and most of them land on the same answer. The DC2 Integra Type R is very widely called the greatest front-driver ever made. Honda built it from 1995 to 2001, on sale in Japan from late 1995, and nearly thirty years on it still embarrasses cars costing several times the money.

Under the bonnet sits the B18C, a 1.8-litre twin-cam four with VTEC. If you have never lived with VTEC, here is the plain version: the engine runs a mild set of cam lobes for pottering round town, then somewhere past 6,000rpm it swaps to a second, wilder set of lobes and the whole thing wakes up and howls. The JDM Type R motor makes about 200 PS at 8,000rpm off a hand-ported head and high compression, and it spins hard toward a redline near 8,400rpm. Some sources put the JDM limiter a shade higher again, so treat the exact number as ballpark. Two hundred naturally aspirated horses from 1.8 litres in the mid nineties was genuinely mad, and a per-litre record for an NA Honda then.

Here is the real trick. The Type R was never about the headline figure. Honda took a fairly ordinary Integra and went at it with a scalpel. The engines were hand assembled by a small team, the gearbox got closer ratios, and a helical limited-slip diff went between the front wheels so it could actually put the power down out of a corner. Then came the diet and the stiffening work: extra seam welding along the shell, thinner glass, sound deadening pulled out, quicker steering, plus the Championship White paint and red Recaro buckets that told everyone what they were looking at. Nothing exotic. Just a hundred small decisions all pulling the same way.

96-spec or 98-spec?

Two flavours matter to buyers. The original 96-spec ran 15-inch wheels on a four-stud hub and the softer of the two chassis setups. The later JDM 98-spec is the one most people chase: it moved to a five-stud hub with 16-inch wheels, bigger brakes up front, revised rear aero and a reworked equal-length exhaust manifold, plus firmer suspension. Odd thing is, purists reckon the lighter 96-spec is actually quicker round a smooth track, so which one is "best" is more religion than fact. Both are cracking, and the helical LSD was fitted from the start either way.

When the DC2 finally bowed out, the DC5 Integra Type R picked up the baton from 2001. It swapped in the 2.0-litre K20A with i-VTEC for roughly 220 PS and gained a six-speed box. Quicker, more grown up, and a fair few DC2 diehards still reckon the older car has the sweeter chassis. That argument will outlive all of us.

Buying one without getting burned

So why buy one. It is the yardstick every hot front-drive car since has been measured against, and it carries a cult following that keeps growing. Good honest examples are climbing hard, so the days of the cheap Teg are long gone.

Buy with your eyes open. Rust is the big killer on imports, so crawl over the rear quarters, the sills, the floors and the strut towers, because tidy repairs are dear and dodgy ones are everywhere. Confirm you are looking at a real Type R and not a tarted-up SiR: the chassis should read DC2 and the engine should be a genuine B18C rather than a swap. Hunt down any crash or track history before you hand over cash. Feel for a diff that still bites when you load the car up, and make sure the Recaros and the trim are the factory items and not a later retrofit. A Type R with a swapped engine or a bodged interior is worth a lot less than a scruffy, honest, matching one.