I have a vid by "Best Motoring" that does a head to head with the new and old Type R, the Japanese engineer doing the test drive is crazy, he redlines the car in every gear, keeps it in the red for like 15 minutes, it's a great video, but I have it on VHS and it would be too much trouble to try to post it.

The main argument that the engineer had for the new ITR (not RSX in Japan) is that it was designed to be the ITR from day one on that platform, then the lower models were designed from that platform. The old ITR was not designed to be the ITR, it was just a plain integra design that was modified to R specs (hand built)