Honda Civic Mugen RR

My first sight of the rarest and probably most desirable Honda Civic on the planet is a flash of blood-red paint and a glint of black wheel spokes a couple of hundred yards away. Even at this range I know it’s the real thing, and up close the Mugen RR is even more striking.

Its owner, Waqar Ahmed, hops out and we shake hands. The driver of the car that followed the Mugen into the lay-by has joined us on the pavement and I shake his hand too. I assume he’s a friend of Waqar’s. Waqar thinks he’s a friend of mine. Turns out he’s a stranger to both of us; he’s simply a Honda enthusiast who wants to know if the car is for sale!

‘It’s mental,’ says Waqar, who collected the car from import specialists Performance Centre Manchester just a few days ago. ‘Everywhere you stop you end up surrounded by people.’ That’s testimony to three things: the irresistible, ground-skimming stance of this limited edition Civic, the desirability of cars that marry the Honda and Mugen names, and the power of the internet.The Civic Mugen RR (be cool and say ‘double R’ rather than sounding like a pirate) went on sale in Japan last September and all 300 examples were snapped up in just ten minutes. This is the only example in the UK and is likely to remain so, as back home RRs are now changing hands at a premium, which is quite something, because while the standard Japanese-market Civic Type-R costs 2.8m yen, this Mugen was 4.8m yen.

That’s quite a hike – about £8K – for what appears, as first glance, to be a gentle massaging of the already impressive JDM Civic Type-R. The more you delve, however, the more thorough you discover the rework has been and the more plausible Mugen’s claim to have built the ultimate front-drive car becomes.

Mugen is well known for offering tuning and styling parts for Hondas, but everything on the RR is unique and will not be on sale separately. Take a chunk out of one of the 18in, seven-spoke forged alloy wheels and you’ll have to prove you own an RR to get another. Ditto the restyled front and rear bumper aprons, which are fashioned from carbonfibre, the vented bonnet in aluminium and the new rear spoiler, also carbon, with additional Gurney flap.