BUYING GUIDE
Frenzied Japanese lunacy or solid German grunt? £15k buys either of these fun but highly contrasting coupés. The burning question is – which one’s best?
HONDA (1997-2001) INTEGRA TYPE R
VOLKSWAGEN CORRADO (1987-1995)
We’ll admit that this is a pretty offbeat pairing. On the one hand we have the Volkswagen Corrado VR6, which took the Golf MkII platform and bits of Passat and skyrocketed it upmarket with rumbling six-pot aggression. And on the other, Honda’s hyperactive Integra Type-R – a stripped- down, bare-bones trackday warrior with balletic poise and a rev counter with silly numbers on it. And these are rivals?
Well, for starters, similar money will buy you either one of these cars today. Their 0-60mph times are also just a couple of tenths apart and their top speeds are near-identical. Most importantly, though, both cars have been heralded as their respective makers’ finest front-wheel-drive models.
The Integra certainly presented an intriguing proposition back in the late 1990s. The NSX-R’s stratospheric halo filtered down beautifully to this more affordable proposition – the first Type-R officially offered in the UK. Contemporary sales literature for the DC2 Integra stated that ‘The "R" stands for "Racing", and this was evident throughout the car.
Honda effectively took the B18C1 engine from the regular Integra GS-R and re-worked it into more of a road-racer. These hand-built engines were ported and polished and revved harder than most people could have ever expected. The numbers on the tachometer go all the way up to 11!
The bodyshell was strengthened with thicker steel along any potential stress points, the suspension lowered, the bushes and anti-roll bars thickened, aluminium strut braces fitted either end and a helical LSD bolted in. With no-nonsense weight-saving, the DC2 tipped the scales at just 1140kg, making it an instant legend.
Rewind back to the late 1980s, and VW was looking to sex the Golf up and push its sports coupé up a notch from the Scirocco – and it certainly achieved all that with the Corrado VR6. Marketed as ‘the European sports car with the Volkswagen difference,’ here was a car that built on a base that was familiar to millions, but which was refracted through a premium lens.
In line with VW’s enthusiasm to differentiate the Corrado from its stablemates and justify its price-tag, the model received a unique 2.9-litre version of the engine, as opposed to the 2.8 used in the Golf and Sharan. The European-market 2.9-litre VR motor delivered 190bhp and the car’s wider track necessitated broader front wings and a new bumper assembly. It also had acquiescent Koni dampers (the G60 had Bilsteins) and a rakish bonnet bulge.
As smallish, four-seat li
