Driven: 1998 Acura Integra Type-R

March, 1998

Seeing the car for the first time I am blinded by all of the white.

Championship White, to be exact. And it’s everywhere. White hood, white roofline, even color-keyed white bumpers. The basket handle style wing is white, as are the wheels. But it’s a special white. An ivory cream kind of white that’s very easy on the eyes, almost soothing. It attracts me to the car like I imagine a mosquito feels staring into a bug light hanging in some backyard in Louisiana. I like it.

Looking at the car from a profile view, the car’s lines are clean and purposeful, with the right amount of bulges and creases to keep things interesting. From the front I smile in approval at the nose job given to all 98 Integra’s –a wider mouth and bigger eyes…no doubt the better to see and eat you with. An Arctic White Wolf. Fantastic. I want to drive it.

Sitting in the car for the first time, the first thing I notice, strangely enough, are the seats. They hold me comfortably enough, and the mixing of textures between the cloth and suede leather give the seats purpose, as if Honda R&D had found that by adding suede on the seats edges, it could hold the driver in place better by offering an increased measure of friction without sacrificing wear characteristics. Whatever the explanation is, I would buy it. In a car like this, you trust any and all changes. This “Integra” also has way of making you notice all the wonderful details and tweaks carefully added by Honda to make it that certain kind of special–the same kind of special that you (once) saw in your wife that separated her from every other girl you just dated. When you find out that the Integra’s gear shift lever has been moved 5 mm back and 3 mm down for better shift feel and balance, you wonder what else they have done that you don’t see. Thinner windshield? Yes. Re-enforced body panels? Check. A lightened ABS system? That too. In lightening a car, the last thing one would try to lighten might be the ABS system. Who would think of that?

The level of detail and thoroughness is insane. As I pour over the press releases I wonder how many Honda engineers marriages’ went sour designing this car. The Integra Type R is not just a vehicle, it is more like a philosophy or ideal. Any car manufacturer can add horsepower. Here in America, the closest to special we build is a Camaro SS or Mustang Cobra, both fine cars to be sure. But ‘thinner windshield’ special? I don’t think so.

Bereft of such niceties (read: heavy, unnecessary things) as air-conditioning (optional), a sunroof, and sound-deadening material, I don’t quite know what to expect as I start the engine for the first time. A turn of the key leads to a very Honda-like starter sound, and a very Accord-like idle, almost a whisper. Still, no reason yet to doubt all the journalistic hyperbole and Acura press release hype, though. I’m sure things will be very un-Accord like here in a moment. I fiddle with the gearbox for a moment with the clutch pedal planted deeply in the graphite-colored carpet, admiring the feel of the thing: I can almost tell the kinds of metal they used in building the gearbox. The lever feels like steel, the gears something softer, maybe aluminum or iron. I don’t know metals, though. I just know it feels right.

I bring the revs up a bit and let the clutch out, able to actually feel the pressure plate and clutch disc scrubbing together. The clutch has a very organic feel that I like. Safely into first now, I notice the first difference between an Accord engine and this B81C5: I can hear the valves. I can actually hear the valves ticking and tapping in a very “should I be hearing this?” kind of way, like hearing your parents having sex. Assuming it to be no cause for alarm or valve adjustment, I continue on, soothed by my reflection on the car as a whole -it does a lot of things you don’t expect it to do. I will be surprised by how numbered this category grows to be after a few hours of driving.

Checking for proper operating temperature (VTEC will not engage unless the car is safely warm), I check my rear-view mirror for police escort and am greeted by a bar of Championship White. Halving my view out of the nicely-sized hatch glass, I have to poke my head beneath it and above it, up and down over and over to get the whole picture out back, –kind of like trying to look out of half-opened Venetian blinds. A little frustrating, but like every other effort made in this car, it is involving. With the coast clear and the rev’s running smoothly at an already busy 4500 RPM, I squeeze the throttle wide-open.

Devoid of torque, but seemingly unbothered by that deficit, the tach needle keeps me informed of the crank speed and nudges up against 5500 RPM. Then I hear a strange click from the engine bay, another one of those “is that a good noise or is that a BAD noise?” clicks. Honda calls it the “VTEC Solenoid.” I call it good and say “thank you, may I have another?” A rush of noise and mechanical doings begins to scream and shake the car. I can’t even describe the noise the 1.8-liter engine makes. It’s like a shriek, or an electric motor spinning out of control. It’s more of an emotion than a sound and you definitely feel it before you hear it. The B18C5 screams out with passion when pushed up into the thinner air of 6000 RPM and beyond. I mean honest-to-God, David Koresh meets Aretha Franklin kind of passion. Twisted, cultish, private passion reserved for 17-year-old making love for the first time on dark golf courses. This car needs a poem penned by Dylan Thomas, not a standard Honda press release. “Rage, rage against the discipline of the rev-limiter….” Lovely.

This is the kind of car–if you could bother someone else to steer–it’d be something to drive it hard like this with your eyes closed–to feel the pounding of the pistons and the whirl of the cams not waltz, but tear through your mind like a drill, removing every unnecessary thought or memory and replacing it with an echo of the VTEC sound, the sliver of the Type R soul, with Championship White co-sin patterns painted wet against your still-vibrating brain.

As for power, it honestly comes on like a riot, more like anger than horsepower. Though urgency is noticeably absent below the switchover point, it is all the more impressive when it finally does come. The lack of torque may yield less capable 0-60 times, but it doubles the driving intensity.

The Type R’s handling balance is ballet-like, with steering feedback so great it’s almost distracting, each wheel reporting its status a hundred thousand times a minute. I can feel the tires smudge against the hot asphalt in a mall parking lot just as easily as I can feel it clawing across off-ramps, the front wheels feeling out for road irregularities in time to warn the back. The whole damn car is a concert of cooperation and recognition, with more feedback and communication than the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile crisis –and every bit as much intensity.