About five years ago in a long-distant land called COVID, I stood in the paddock of Lime Rock Park, slack-jawed. Appropriately distanced from a clutch of masked magazine editors, I marveled at our luck. By virtue of fate and effort, we’d assembled perhaps the greatest lineup of cars ever seen outside a Formula 1 grid. From the McLaren F1 to the Shelby Cobra, the legends were all there, vying for glory in the comparison test to end all comparisons.
Amid company like that, who’d have thought a silly yellow Honda would rise like VTEC cream to the top?
But that’s the Integra Type R for you. It’s good enough to sidle up to any car on earth and have an earnest conversation about which one’s more desirable. Even the McLaren F1. Depending on how old you are, that may come as a shock.
Those too old to have appreciated The Fast and the Furious on opening night or too young to have owned an ITR before the collectors’ market shot prices stratospheric will wonder: What’s so special about a plucky hopped-up Honda anyways?
It was a far more important question for Honda to answer in 1997. Japanese performance cars were not yet that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven. That which they were, they were. Especially to the American public, who mostly saw import tuners as commodity cars with a clever turn of pace but no worthiness among the established pantheon—Corvettes, Porsches, Ferraris, BMWs, and the like.
When it came to the Integra Type R, that impression just wouldn’t do. So Honda’s engineers did one of those Predator Handshakes with the PR team. They cooked up a Technical Information Guide—effectively a Type R dossier—to explain the many differences between your garden variety Integra and an engineering masterpiece. But this was not merely marketing material.
Instead, the Tech Guide spanned 37 pages, cover to cover, breaking down the endless tweaks that transformed Acura’s sporty commuter into perhaps the greatest front-wheel-drive sport compact of all time. All killer, no filler.
With permission from Honda’s PR, we’ve highlighted some of the juiciest cuts from that old tech guide. The truth about this car is all right there on its pages; The Integra Type R was lavished with every rarified go-fast tweak mighty Honda could muster.
As such, this car deserves your praise. Drive one in anger, even once down a curvy two-lane or race-track hairpin and you’ll see why Honda’s best could line up against McLaren’s without so much as a blink.
Of course, it all comes back to that engine. It's called the Honda B18C5.
The twin-cam B18 made 195 horses from just four cylinders, 16 valves, and 1.8 liters. Oh, and zero turbos. In the guide itself, Honda boasted that almighty stat, which has become legend:
"This engine puts out more horsepower per liter than any other normally aspirated mass-produced car in the U.S."
What a marketing mic drop.
Significant engine improvements abounded, freeing 25 additional horsepower from a lesser version of the B18 (called C1) found in the Integra GS-R. To improve the B18, its intake and exhaust ports were hand-polished, and the compression ratio bumped from 10.1- to 10.6:1. The engine's throttle body grew larger, and every other hot-rod tweak was applied. That meant precision machining of the connecting rods from high-strength steel, with a page in the tech guide devoted to how precisely the con-rod bolts were tightened.
But Honda probed beyond knuckledragger hotrod tweaks, and into the hi-tech.
The B18C5's high-pressure die-cast pistons were reshaped to create that bump in compression, with valve pockets deepened within the piston's dome to accommodate increased lift and duration from the valvetrain.
The piston skirts were coated with friction-minimizing molybdenum and oil paths were machined into the underside of the piston itself to lubricate the pin.
These pages from the Tech Guide explain many of the changes, ripped straight from How To Win Friends and Crush Dorks at Your Track Day, but they don't explain how mighty this little 1.8-liter engine feels. Nor how raunchy-good the engine sounds.
There's a louder, prouder note issuing from the Integra Type R than any of its Acura or Honda brethren, thanks to a simpler, wider, and straighter header design. When combined with the less-restrictive muffler, exhaust flow increased by 30 percent over the already breathy GS-R. Acura even added a muffler tip meant to ape the style of the NSX, plus a third chamber inside the muffler to provoke that soundtrack.
But really it's that high-compression, naturally aspirated intake note that steals the show. Literally, when VTEC kicks in (ugh... fine... "YO!"), this is one of the finest-sounding engines in existence, shouting that sort of gnarly chomping growl you'll only hear from a snorty inline-four, somewhere between urgent mongrel bloodlust and a marine engine's rock-steady rhythmic churn. If that mixed metaphor makes no sense, please know a few things: 1. I'm writing this article on low blood sugar; 2. Dat B18C5 sounds real good; 3. Probably because it breathes so well.
"In the interests of high rpm, high output, and weight reduction, the Type R utilizes a larger-diameter throttle body and exclusive single-port intake manifold," the brochure offered as proof.
Honda widened the throttle bore by 2 millimeters and the cast-aluminum intake runner was shortened and straightened to direct air on a more efficient path to the cylinder head. The new intake manifold (right) saved seven pounds over the lesser GS-R's dual-port intake manifold (left), while the intake runners were increased in diameter from 35 to 42 mm. The new design aimed the injectors almost directly toward the center of the intake valves, the brochure said, improving driveability and engine response.
With the Integra Type R, you tend to focus on the engine because it dominates the conversation with the driver. At least until you throw the ITR at a corner. This is a drifty, tail-happy machine that defaults to oversteer whether you're lifting into a corner or not.
It's some of the most daring suspension geometry you'd ever experience on a car that came with a factory warranty and I wonder aloud: How many month-old ITRs were dragged from a roadside ditch by a hook 'round the car's front subframe?
That's not to say the ITR's suspension was overlooked. Instead, it was clearly lavished with intention. Never ever have I driven a front-wheel drive car with a more engaging character.
The helical LSD helps to that end. On corner exit (or entry), there's not an ounce of push, torque steer, or wheel hop from the front end, just a precision instrument galloping full-speed with the heart of an escaped convict.
If your curiosity hasn't yet been sated, you can browse a copy of the Technical Document right here. Needless to say, it goes layers and layers deeper than this story, but does so much to explain why the Integra Type R was no mere commodity commuter, but a statement piece that Honda could elevate a sport compact to something more like perfection.
