| Week at the Wheel | Honda Civic Type R MUGEN |

Inside & Out:

MUGEN claims its Type R is designed to stay on the tasteful side of mental. Some might point at the spoiler and ask 'how?' But we love the madness of it; the winged, slammed and skirted look tells you exactly how brutal this car can be.

Whether it looks like a £39,000 car is debatable, but those in the know (and Gran Turismo players) will recognise that this is no hack-and-stick amateur job. As well as the obvious outer work, MUGEN buyers get a trio of pressure gauges on the dash, a plaque denoting its build number (of just 20) on the centre console (the press car is 00) and a height adjustable seat. The last Type R we tried, a GT, had a fixed seat, for shame.

A few grand more and MUGEN will rip the back seats out and replace them with a roll cage. Hardcore indeed.

Engine & Transmission:

Cricket fans have the sound of leather hitting willow for a massive six; football fans have the thwack and chink of a 30-yard screamer hitting the back of the net; WWE fans have the catharsis of a greasy man in tight Speedos grunting; MUGEN drivers have the enhanced VTEC zone.

By stripping and rebuilding the engine, MUGEN has extracted another 40bhp from the 2.0-litre VTEC (for a 240bhp total) and pronounced the VTEC zone so it turns on like a tap at 6,000rpm. This is as close to a touring car as you'll get for the road. That the gearbox dances from cog to cog with the precision of a robotic arm only makes this feel more like a tightly wound racing special.

Ride & Handling:

With an engine this visceral, the handling needs to raise its game. It does. There's a symbiosis here that few cars attain, let alone front-wheel drive family cars. The MUGEN gets the Civic Type R Championship White edition's limited slip differential, but there's a bespoke suspension setup, lighter wheels, a revised steering rack and stickier tyres all adding to a handling experience that's a level or two above.

For a start the MUGEN rides better then the crashy, lumpy Type R. It's still hard as nails, but it's more composed and less inclined to throw your noggin against the headlining. The real centrepiece of the whole thing, though, is the kinesis of the circle in front of you. The weighting is perfect, the feedback glorious and the turn-in needle sharp; it reacts millimetres from the centre, but never feels twitchy. You can lean on the front tyres because you know exactly when they're going to give. And because of that, you'll quickly come to understand that it takes a very specific effort to make them let go.

Equipment, Economy & Value for Money:

The MUGEN Type R is ostensibly one of the worst value shopping trolleys on the road, yet as business case the company might as well be building time machines out of Austin Allegros.

We're told that, should you choose to source a Civic Type R and all the parts that comprise the MUGEN yourself, you'd be spending the thick end of £60,000. Add the cost of 150 hours of expert labour per car and, all of a sudden, £40,000 is a real bargain. And with only 20 of them about, you can legitimately lay claim to owning one of the rarest production cars in existence.

Still, it's forty grand for a kitted up Civic; you really have to understand what's so great about this thing for it to make sense. And based on our experience, we're guessing 20mpg is optimistic.

Overall:

It's wonderful to drive something focused not on headline power figures but simply on the art of driving. The MUGEN Civic is brutal and brilliant.

At this price, and given its availability, the MUGEN may be a rarefied hatchback, but we're glad it exists. If nothing else, it signals what's to come from a UK-based outfit that could well see its ties with Honda strengthened - a blue collar AMG, if you will. We expect another, more accessible next generation MUGEN Type R, and a CR-Z before it. On this evidence, they'll be sensational.