For driving enthusiasts, the humble hot hatch has been a saving grace in recent decades. While dedicated sports cars are wonderful, if you've got kids to drop off and groceries to get, then something with four doors and a properly-sized trunk is a must. Rather than settling for a lackluster Toyota Camry or Honda Fit, hot hatchbacks offer a happy medium. They have the practicality of the body style coupled with a hot engine, dynamic suspension set-up, and — where still available — an engaging six-speed manual transmission.
Alongside all-time greats such as the Volkswagen Golf GTI and Toyota GR Corolla — which we test drove just earlier this year — the Honda Civic Type R has been leading the class for some time now. Its boosted inline-four engine provides heaps of horsepower, the front-wheel drive layout is predictable and chuckable, and the driver-focused cabin helps to amplify the whole experience. The only downside is, along with everything else at the moment, the Civic Type R is now quite an expensive beast. It sports an MSRP of $45,895, plus taxes, dealer, and destination fees.
One saving grace, however, is that performance cars do tend to hold their value quite well. To demonstrate how much value a brand-new Type R might retain, we can take a look at how much a 2020 model has depreciated over the last five years. Kelley Blue Book (KBB) reports that, when new, a 2020 Type R would have set you back $37,950. The good news is that KBB now places a value of $32,533 on that same car, representing a loss of just $5,417.
In short, the hot Honda barely loses $1,000 per year to depreciation. To the uninitiated, that might not sound too great – losing $1,000 per year – but in truth, that's pretty hard to beat. For reference, CarEdge estimates that the average new car loses 20% of its initial value in the first year alone; the 2020 Type R doesn't even lose this much over five years, according to the data provided by KBB.
You might expect to lose a bit more money if you're trading your car in, as dealerships still need to make a profit, but things still don't look too bad in this instance. KBB tells us that owners can expect around $27,789 when trading such a car in, which represents a loss of close to $10,000, or $2,000 per year.
Interestingly, KBB also shows that this figure is up by almost $1,000 over trade-in figures reported in 2024, which suggests the 2020 Type R has actually started to appreciate, rather than depreciate. This is seriously uncommon, but not unheard of. Other cars that have appreciated in value include some particularly special editions and rare performance models, although cars like these are the exception, and far from the rule.
It might seem strange to read that the Type R is retaining so much value that it even appreciates, especially when you consider that the regular Civic does not follow this pattern. That one isn't terrible in terms of depreciation, but it does drop around 29% of its value after five years, which is considerably worse than the Type R. There are good reasons for this, however.
Not to knock the standard Civic, because it's a great and very capable machine, but it doesn't come close to offering what the Type R does. There are plenty of alternatives to the Civic out there, like the Corolla, Elantra, and Sentra, but the Type R almost stands alone in the marketplace. A manual-equipped performance-focused hot hatch is a dying breed, and as such, collectors and enthusiasts hold them in high regard. There aren't many choices out there offering 306 horsepower, figure-hugging Recaro seats, and the capability to post a sub-8-minute Nürburgring lap time and pick the kids up from school, too.
This exclusive nature helps to keep the Type R's values high, and it's likely that the soaring prices of new Type R models dragged up the values of used cars, too. A new one in 2025 is just about $10,000 more expensive than what a new model cost in 2020. This hike in price will likely make lightly-used models more attractive, therefore strengthening values.
