1997 Honda sells for AUD$90,000

By: Alex Affat, Unique Cars magazine

Date: 05.10.2018

A Championship White Honda DC2 Integra Type R sold for a record-setting price

1997 Honda sells for AUD$90,000

An icon of the Playstation generation, the Honda Integra DC2 Type R was a formidable road racer of the late 90s.

Finding a good one nowadays is incredibly rare, as they’ve virtually all been mutilated by decades of use as cheap performance cars and errr…. modifications by young enthusiasts.

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That may explain the price rises we’ve seen in these cars over the past few years, but no one could’ve seen them fetching anything close to the AUD$90,000 we saw at Barrett-Jackson in the US this week, especially when they were new.

The Acura-badged Championship White example which sold at the American auction house this week was an extremely original and low mileage example. How low mileage you ask? Just 1200 miles to be precise.

The winning bid was an eye-watering USD$63,800 including fees.

For those not familiar with these cars, that can be an absolute gobsmack to the brain.

But with a superbly balanced front-wheel driven chassis, powered by a 150kW high-revving 1.8lt B18 four-cylinder engine with a close-ratio five-speed box; the DC2 Type R was lauded by motoring journalists around the world when it was released.

It similarly retains much of that magic, perhaps even more so as the decades have gone by. And tt still remains one of the best front-wheel-drive cars ever made.

Two decades later, people are finally realising the classic traits of Japanese cars in general, with the sector seeing sharp rises in price for those iconic tops-spec hero cars.

For DC2 Integras especially, it’s a fair bet that they’ll continue to increase in price – and its not uncommon for top-end sales like this to drag values up across the board. Though this car is somewhat of a unicorn, and is definitely not the average price for the average Type R.

The exorbitant auction-winning bid will likely be the record price for the late 90s Honda sports coupe for a fair while to come, as it’s hard to believe there are many other examples out there with such low mileage and originality.

There’s only a couple on the market across Australia, with prices ranging between low-teens to mid-20s. Though kilometres are nudging on the high side these days, and you’d want to take a focused look at the cars maintenance history and mechanical health.

These cars are famous for revving to 8500rpm, and it’d be a bit naïve to look at these cars and to believe the tacho needle hasn’t spent much time up there…

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