Honda rental
Kuala Lumpur

Honda is an engine company that happens to build cars, and the evidence is everywhere in its history: VTEC variable valve timing that gave road cars motorcycle-style top-end urgency, a Formula One programme that produced the most dominant engine of the turbo era, and a stubborn commitment to high-revving atmospheric units long after the rest of the industry moved on. Soichiro Honda was a mechanic before he was an industrialist and the culture never lost that.

The Civic Type R is the purest thing that culture still produces. Its two-litre turbocharged four is not the old atmospheric screamer, but the chassis underneath is the more remarkable component. The front axle uses a dual-axis strut design that separates the steering axis from the damper axis, which very nearly eliminates torque steer in a 320-horsepower front-wheel-drive car — an engineering problem most manufacturers solve by simply not building 320-horsepower front-drive cars. Add a helical limited-slip differential and an adaptive damper system with a genuinely usable Comfort setting and you have a car that laps quickly and commutes without punishing you.

On the roads around Kuala Lumpur the Type R makes an argument that the exotics cannot. It is narrow enough for a Bangsar side street, it has ground clearance, the boot is enormous, and on a tight technical road like the climb behind Sungai Long or the Ulu Yam loop it is faster point-to-point than half the supercars on this site because you can actually use the performance. The rev-matching downshift function on the manual-feel gearbox is one of the most satisfying features in any car at any price.

The Civic RS sits at the other end — the sensible, efficient, well-packaged saloon that is the default sane rental in Malaysia. It is on this site because sometimes the honest recommendation for a week of city driving is not a supercar, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.