Here's How Much Faster A Mercedes-AMG A45 Is Than A Honda Civic Type R

With a lot more power plus the traction benefits of four-wheel drive, it's no surprise the Mercedes is quicker. But the gap to the Honda is even bigger than you might expect...

Matt Robinson

16 Dec 2016

The result itself for this drag race isn’t surprising. Of course the Mercedes wins: its 376bhp output puts it 70bhp ahead of the Honda, and it has the benefit of four-wheel drive traction off the line. Oh, and given that it’s £10,000 more than the Civic, the A45 bloody well ought to win.

What is perhaps surprising is the gap between the two: it’s absolutely massive. It’s a quick car that A45, as the Car Wow lot proved with another drag race featuring a whole roster of Mercedes-AMGs.

Which car would you rather have, the Mercedes, or the Honda?

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Further inspection revealed VTEC was disabled on the Honda.

Test sponsored by Mercedes.

jk lel nobody get butthurt

LATEST: THE MERCEDES BENZ IS VTEC-POWERED.

AMG hat reingehauen
Yo!:-)

The Honda Civic in the video is fake. VTEC didn’t kick in.

F1 in real life!!

Fwawww, what a difference, but fwd is about mid corner grip and braking because of the lighter weight.
You wouldnt compare a muscle car and a track car exclusively with a drag race.

You would if you’re Jeremy Clarkson

14.7 on the new Civic are ridiculously slow. Thats the same as a 98 Type R 200 hp N/A
Here are some off the steets numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHsWQfUyO0M

Now use the Honda for what it was built for against the Merc.

Which is ?

what if you just spend £10K on Civic ?

i don’t it’d make much of a difference honestly, the a45 amg is in a class of it owns when it comes to traction, you’d have to convert it to AWD and build a transmission to work with an AWD system, as well as upgrading the engine, it’d cost way more than 10k to even get the same results. But they’re both great cars in they’re own way!

The Civic Type R is a mid-high 13s car. This guy got it past at 14.7, about a second slower than the other magazines.

I ran my old Acura CL Type S which is heavier with 3.2 V6 6MT 13.9 i can not belive that 300hp+ civic is running 1/4 in 14.8s you need some skill and throttle modulation to help with wheels spin this guy clearly dont know how to drive it

Top Gear Magazine ran it against a Golf R and it did the 1/4 in 13.8. The Golf did it in 13.1, we all know the A45 is quite a lot quicker than the Golf R anyway so the gap would still be pretty hefty.