The Japanese automaker has always been a little experimental when it came to compact car shenanigans, so both the regular Civic and its high-performance Type R counterpart have been great examples of that. But, from now on, things are getting a lot more serious.
And that would only be logical – you can only do such quirky stuff for so long, but not when your Civic has reached the eleventh generation, and the 2023 Civic Type R is already at its sixth iteration, as well. Naturally, there have been a lot of opinions regarding the new looks (as the technical specifications are still a mystery at this point), both in the real world and across the virtual realm.
As far as the latter is concerned, some were keen to point out its new style could be trickled down to smaller models such as the City hatchback, morph into a sportier two-door Coupe, or serve as the cool basis for lots of aftermarket enhancements, even if only digitally, for now. But there is also one pixel master that wants us to know the Civic remembers. Not the North, but rather its origins.
Siim Parn, the Estonia-based virtual artist, better known as spdesignsest on social media, has ditched the neo-retro designs for something modern once again. And we are properly enjoying this series, which so far includes the 2023 VW Amarok getting its first CGI tuning job (a widebody overlander!), the ubiquitous Rolls-Royce Cullinan transformed into a Landaulet-type “White Mammoth,” and now this – a much slimmer 2023 Honda Civic Type R Three-Door Hot Hatch.
As far as we can tell, the inspiration is simple – the original EK9 (based on the sixth-gen Civic) was exactly that, a minimalistic, no-frills three-door hatchback. Additionally, the second-gen EP3 was more of the same – but this imagined design can also draw big roots from the third-generation FN2 European and international model produced in Swindon, UK, from 2007 to 2011.