Finished at 2pm today to collect the car, then went for a three hour drive around the island, with a decent mix of town driving, B road driving, TT course driving etc at a variety of speeds (in normal speed limit zones and on derestricted roads).
It's a fabulously good fun car to drive 'properly', but also perfectly tolerable and tame around town. Obviously I didn't push it too far as I'm still learning it and the conditions weren't ideal either.
The turbo changes things a lot, with loads of pulling power from 2500-3000rpm upwards, and there's none of the 'power stages' that you got with the old VTECs, just a solid wall of power all the way out to 6500rpm (it redlines at 7000rpm but you want to be changing before then).
The gearbox is superb (many reviewers cite it as one of the best manual boxes going, the Top Gear site's review said if all manuals were this good no one would want DSGs), with really quick, accurate changes, and just 40mm of throw. (I've seen the phrase 'bolt action rifle' used more than once to describe it.)
The handing is quite a bit different to the S4, FWD versus AWD for starters, it's a smaller car, it's a lot stiffer sprung, and so on. In a straight line with the power right down it definitely feels a bit more skittery than the S4 (Honda have massively reduced torque steer but not eliminated it), but through the corners it's far tighter and more composed. (There's a diff in the front axle that does all sorts of clever shit, so everyone says.)
The R+ mode is an absolute hoot, not least because it makes all the instruments and screens go blood red which looks cool, but then you have sharper throttle response, the suspension becomes 30% stiffer, the steering firms up, it eases off on the traction control and stuff like that. Many reviewers say it's useless unless you're on a race track, but whilst the TT course is not a race track when it's open as a public road, it's still maintained as if it were a race track, and the entire mountain section (some 10 miles) is derestricted
Cabin wise it's solidly put together with decent materials and a good fit and finish, I didn't particularly feel like I was 'trading down' coming from the S4. The main touchscreen is splendid, you can swipe and drag like on an iPad, and pinch in and out to change the satnav range, that sort of thing. As mine is the GT it has all the extra toys, including the Garmin satnav, reversing camera + front and rear sensors, upgraded speaker system (which sounds excellent), it reads road signs as you go past and displays what the speed limit is, it does collision/lane detection etc and will apparently brake for you if you're about to read-end someone in town.
The Bluetooth audio streaming from Spotify on my phone worked flawlessly, it's got dual-USB, HDMI (!?!?) and iPod inputs as well. Most things can be controlled from the steering wheel controls, there are a few 'hard' buttons next to the touchscreen and then you've got the touchscreen itself.
My average MPG for the trip was 30.5mpg, and it saw the high side of 100mph and 6000-7000rpm on several occasions.
The looks are entirely subjective, personally I think it looks aweseome, as detailed earlier in this thread the first time I clamped eyes on it I wanted one (when the Honda dealer here got their demonstrator in), and vowed that once the price came down a bit I'd have one - and so it has come to pass.
As it is mine is less than two years old (it's a Dec 2015), it's had one owner, and it's only done 15000 miles. 16 months of warranty left to run and over three years of the Honda Care Plan.
So initial impressions are most definitely that I like it a lot.
Now it is time for Buckfast.
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