Very first, you say?

Yup. This is the very first, British-built, 2017 Honda Civic Type R. VIN 01, no less. It is the most powerful Honda ever built for the States, and the first Civic Type R to be sold officially in America.

As such, Honda is auctioning off this very car – number one on the production line – to a lucky bidder in the USA.

Tell me more.

Over to Honda’s America’s senior VP, Jeff Conrad.

“The Civic Type R has long been forbidden fruit for enthusiasts in the US, so we thought it would be fun to offer one lucky customer a shot at owning the first of its kind in America, while benefitting the leading non-profit solely dedicated to finding a cure for childhood brain tumours – the Pediatric Brain Tumour Foundation.”

Yeah yeah, but is it a ‘production’ car, or a stripped out special?

“The development car that achieved the lap time was technically representative of production specification,” Honda said at the time.

They did note that a roll cage was fitted, for safety reasons, “but its presence did not provide any additional rigidity to the body frame”. Though the rear seats were taken out to compensate for the weight of the cage…

Sticky tyres, too?

“Road-legal track-focused tyres,” Honda said. So sticky-ish.

Fair enough. Got a powerful engine, right?

Right. The 2.0-litre four-pot turbo - with VTEC, yo – produces 316hp and 400Nm of torque. The same as the outgoing Civic Type R, but plenty enough to keep you entertained considering it remains front-wheel drive. Rivals offer 4WD. Well, the Ford Focus RS and VW Golf R do.

Why didn’t Honda just ramp the power up massively and make it 4WD, then?

Honda told TG that they never considered it, though did take a “close look” at the tech others were using, because it was “interested”.

Nevertheless, that engine is matched to a short-shifting, six-speed gearbox – no automatic option here, not even considering its US debut – with a rev-matching feature for easy heroic downchanges, that you can deactivate if you want to blip yourself.

What else is new?

It’s based on the all-new Civic, which means torsional rigidity is up by 38 per cent over the old Type R, there’s independent multi-link rear suspension (as opposed to the old car’s torsion beam), and an increased wheelbase and track.

The latter, so that it’s “lower and wider”, naturally.

Are there MODES?

Yes. You get adaptive dampers controlled through three driving modes: Comfort, Sport and +R. We don’t need to tell you which one to sellotape down…

I’m in. Where do I sign up?

Here. The auction closes on June 15, and – at the time of writing – the bids on this Aegean Blue, triple-exhaust really quite fast hot hatch have already shot the price up..

Over to you, Internet…