Sadly, it was only frustrated drooling for Honda's most fanatical supporters and especially their Type-R fans who are outside of Japan. While the Type-R brought unprecedented respect for Honda's technological prowness, for reasons never fully understood, Honda themselves have stubbornly insisted on keeping these engineering marvels from their most hard-core of fans outside of Japan. The original DC2-R did spawn a relatively good 'export version' for outside of Japan. But after that, Honda simply refused to allow their fans outside of Japan to get access to this wonderful model. In its place, they offered de-tuned and de-spec'ed versions, sometimes labelled as a 'Type-R', often as something else. It was a stubborn silliness that Honda's hard-core fans never could understand and in truth it eventually even started to bring about feelings of antagonistism and anti-sentiments, that Honda is just not bothered with their many hard-core fanatical fans.
From my close dealings with Honda since the previous millenium, I know this is very far from the truth - as far as Honda marketing is concerned. As a self-confessed 'greatest hard-core Honda fanatic' in the world, I was always extremely vocal in my message to Honda that they need to bring their Type-Rs to those of us outside of Japan. And the Honda marketing people I have dealt with at least have always been completely supportive of this idea. Unfortunately, support for their efforts have always been short in coming. Over the years, Honda R&D continued to simply ignore and pretended that 'export models' which they deemed 'sufficient' for the enthusiasts should be used and their precious Type-Rs be kept to japanese domestic only.
But finally, after so many years of trying and working by some extremely dedicated Honda marketing folks, the 'mission' has been acheived. On August 2nd 2007, Honda Malaysia delivered on their promise and made history for this new millenium by bringing in for local domestic sales, the original JDM-spec FD2 Civic Type-R ! It is a tremendous acheivement, a long mission over many years spanning no less than 3 Honda Malaysia C.E.O.s and with numerous dedicated marketing staff spending countless sleepless nights agonizing over logistics and details. But the end result was well worth it. Finally, we hard-core fanatic enthusiasts outside of Japan can enjoy an original JDM Type-R model in its full glory. I am sure the Honda enthusiasts world will never be the same again after this momentous occasion.
