Despite keeping busy with (mainly) BMWs these days, clearly the Type R badge still holds a special place in Alex’s heart. He has a long-term project in the form of a once-Championship White ’01 ITR (it’s now Nighthawk Black Pearl) which is going down the restomod route, beside which sits his fully-restored, numbers-matching ’00 ITR that long-term readers would be familiar with – click here for that car’s feature from 2017. With the best of both worlds already in his collection – one Type R that he can build as he pleases and one kept in factory specification – surely there wouldn’t be need for a third, right?

Well, Alex being Alex, he decided to get one anyway. Except it wasn’t another Integra Type R, but one of the new FK8 Civic Type Rs. And of course it wasn’t just any Civic Type R, but one of the Limited Edition variants, finished in Phoenix Yellow. Because of course it was.

If I’m being honest, it wasn’t actually a surprise at all to see that he had purchased one because if we had to place money on who in town would be most likely to take delivery of a CTR LE, we’d have bet on him anyway. It would be the ultimate garage mate for his restored Phoenix Yellow ITR and the two side-by-side would surely look amazing…which they do, as you will see for yourself today.

With some plans in mind for the CTR, Alex asked Aldrich and myself if we’d be interested in grabbing some photos of it and the PY ITR together while both cars were in stock configuration, and of course we said yes. With a date set we all met up one evening; Aldrich and I had cameras in hand, and with the help of Adrian as a second driver the two Type Rs were brought out and set up.

The location chosen was the new parkade in downtown Calgary, which basically became the place for photos as everyone and their dog seemed to go here this year. Neither of us had shot at it yet so this finally gave us the opportunity to check it out, although a shared fear of heights among almost all of us led to some second-guessing of that decision at the start.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

After we got accustomed to the surprisingly thin-looking barriers tasked with preventing objects leaving the outer perimeter of the structure – and the height of it – we started positioning the Type Rs in a few different arrangements and grabbed our photos. Once the light had sufficiently set and we called it quits, Alex then very kindly treated us all to ice cream as a thanks for coming out! Having the opportunity to see these two cars together – let alone photograph them together – was payment enough but it was hard to argue with free ice cream.

On that note, I do want to say thank you again to Alex and Adrian for making this possible. I don’t know if anyone else in the world can say they own a matching PY DC2/FK8 combo, and surely seeing examples together will never be a common occurrence regardless. These are two incredibly special pieces of Honda engineering and it was an honour to be able to photograph them together, as it was a truly special opportunity that I don’t think too many people will receive.

I hope you enjoy the photos (and quick video) of ITR 00-0177 and CTR LE 93 together, and as always thank you for reading!

Alex’s Instagram: @silver_gsr

-Bill