BEHIND THE HEADLINES
Red tape is throttling supply and will kill off some of Japan’s current performance stars
We are living in a new halcyon era of the Japanese sports car. Toyota has the petrolhead by the scruff of the neck with its GR86 and GR Yaris in Europe, as well as the GR Corolla in North America. Honda’s new Civic Type R is the instant classic we all hoped it would be. Hell, even Nissan has resurrected the Z car.
But for the European and UK en-thusiast this surge of immensely tasty metal from the other side of the world comes at a significant cost. Safety and emissions regulations, combined with some huge price ris-es, are restricting sales so much that they could end up being seen on the road about as often as unicorns.
Few cars illustrate the issue as neatly as the new FL5-generation Type R. When the previous-genera-tion FK8 launched it cost around £31k. Now, Honda’s asking a mighty £47k. And where Honda UK would shift thousands of Civic Type Rs per year just a couple of generations ago, its 2023 allocation is in the hundreds. Why? Fleet CO2 limits. Ex-ceeding those means fines, so Honda’s re-worked the eco-nomics around its tearaway hatch. If it’s forced to shrink volume, why not crank up the price, in turn paying for more high-performance engineer-ing, and reward the hardcore enthu-siast with a truly special car?
As we reported in the February is-sue, new Euro 7 emissions regula-tions have blindsided the automotive industry, adding significant financial and time costs as manufac-turers – already flat-out racing to electrify – have to rework power-trains. ‘If a car is in production and regulation changes, normally you’d get a two-year grace period,’ a senior European engineer tells CAR. ‘But with Euro 7, it doesn’t look like that’s happening.’
ALL MODELS MUST BE ADAPTED IN DOUBLE QUICK TIME OR FACE EARLY RETIREMENT
And the legislation will require car makers to make some profound en-gineering changes to keep cars in production. ‘Euro 7 covers emissions, tyres and brakes. For brakes, do we have to change the size of the discs? The brake’s system performance? Is it a full change? Then what does that mean for stopping distances?’
All models must either be adapted in double-quick time or face early retirement. And new models natu-rally need to comply; not straightfor-ward considering the short lead time for implementing Euro 7.
And that’s not all. The latest General Safety Regulation (or GSR2) kicked in from July 2022, and al-though the UK is no longer in the EU, it still applies in the UK. It specifies that new cars need intelligent speed assistance, some sort of reversing aid, driver attention warnings and additional cybersecurity meas
