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It's always a worry when a company decides to 'improve' an already successful product. Time after time, best-sellers plummet down the popularity charts after the marketing team has a tinker with the formula. Honda isn't generally prone to such mistakes; but would the latest version of that archetypal boy- (or girl-) racer's hot hatch, the Civic Type R, be a disappointment? Because what they've done is to tone down the car's harsher characteristics to make it less raw, and more driveable.

The 'R' stands for racing, and Honda doesn't dole out its distinctive red R badges lightly. The latest Type R still does 0-62mph in 6.6 seconds, meaning it can easily leave a Golf GTI behind at the lights, if that's what turns you on. But, says Honda, the overall objective wasn't to make the fastest hot hatch but to 'quicken the pulse of the driver'. So, we thought, let's really send our pulse-rates through the roof and take the Type R out on track. Brands Hatch, no less, with (since I am by no stretch of the imagination a race driver) an instructor to help get the best from the car. And to make sure I didn't end up in the gravel, either. Would the latest model warrant an R badge?

Oh yes. It's quick, of course it is, but more importantly you no longer have to rev the engine so hard to feel it sing. The new Type R has retained the 146mph, 2.0litre i-VTEC engine, slightly tamed but nevertheless keeping an engine note which suggests that its heart, if not quite all its soul, longs to be let loose on track. At Brands Hatch, piling into corners faster than I would ever dream of on the road, I could start to feel the limits of what is, essentially, a hotted-up hatchback. It is softer and taller than, say, a Honda S2000, which has been engineered as a sports car from the outset. The Type R's on-track ability is never going to match a lower, harsher, machine, but then it's far more viable as an everyday road car. And at all but racetrack speeds, it still hugs the road like a long-lost friend.