Honda To Enter An Estate In 2014 BTCC

2014 Honda Civic Tourer BTCC (image from the factory teams' Twitter)

The climax of the 2013 British Touring Car Championship was a real nail-biter, and in the end it was won by independent driver Andrew Jordan in a Honda Civic. In 2011 and 2012, the series was also won by Honda Civics, driven by Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden respectively for the officially-backed Honda Yuasa Racing team. So, I can say with relative confidence that the 2014 BTCC will be won by...... an estate car.

Oh yes! Honda's entry next year will officially be a 300bhp Civic Tourer, only the second family wagon to enter the series after Tom Walkinshaw Racing prepared a pair of Volvo 850 T5s in 1994, which you can see getting caught up in this crash:

It also appears in this video I found, but only very briefly. I'm only really posting this one because it's fun:

Anyway, there's not really much else to say about the Civic Tourer BTCC, other than obvious things like pointing out that next year it will have been 20 years since 1994 and that the 2014 Civic BTCC is based on the newly-launched Honda Civic Tourer and is otherwise the same as a normal Civic, but with more rear overhang. Whether that extra metal out back affects the weight balance significantly, I don't know. The aerodynamics might be slightly different, too. Power will come from the same 2.0 Turbo engine, built by a bloke called Neil Brown, whom is apparently an engineering company in his spare time. Most importantly, though, having more rear end gives vengeful drivers more car to hit, which might keep Neal and Shedden on their toes...

We'll find out during the last weekend of March next year, when the season kicks off at Brands Hatch, a track you can experience in your room at home thanks to Gran Turismo 6.