Honda Civic Type R

In August 1997 Honda gave the Civic the red badge, and the EK9 set the template every Civic Type R since has chased. The B16B made 185 PS from 1.6 litres — the highest specific output of any naturally aspirated production engine at the time — spinning to 8,400 rpm through a close-ratio five-speed and helical LSD. Seam welding, stripped sound deadening, red Recaros, titanium shift knob: nothing on the car was decoration.

Its culture lives on Osaka's kanjo loop, where teams like No Good Racing turned EK Civics into midnight folk heroes, backed up by one-make Civic racing and a starring role in Gran Turismo 2 that put the EK9 in front of a generation who couldn't yet legally drive one. While the DC2 collected the magazine covers, the EK9 collected the street credibility — and that gap is exactly what's closing now.

Only around 16,000 were built, every single one JDM, and most lived hard. Since the first cars cleared the 25-year rule in 2022, unmodified examples — original Recaros, stock B16B, no roll-cage holes in the floor — have become the prize, with clean Championship White cars pushing into DC2 Integra money and past it. The first Type R Civic has become the collectible Type R Civic.