With a roomy estate premiering at last week’s Frankfurt show, as well as more details of the Type-R hatchback to come, Honda clearly has a lot more plans for its UK-built Civic range. Glenn Brooks samples the new 1.6-litre diesel hatchback.
The Civic hatchback seems to be one of those rare slow-burn models. What do I mean by that? Well, it was launched at the Frankfurt motor show two years ago this month and entered production at the HUM plant in southern England in December 2011 but sales didn’t really start to build until this year.
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One of the main reasons why the car took so long to take off has been Honda’s 2.2-litre diesel engine. It’s still a state of the art unit but alas the market doesn’t care about that when the CO2 number is all that anyone wants to know. Honda’s engineers did well to bring the official average down from 139g/km in the previous shape model to just 110g/km – a lot of that was thanks to the addition of stop-start. The trouble is, the goal posts keep getting moved: Ford of Britain will soon be selling a petrol engine in the Focus that delivers just 99g/km. In that context it’s not hard to see why Honda took the sensible step of replacing its big 2.2-litre diesel with a far more competitive new 1.6.
A special low CO2 version of the 1.6 i-DTEC emits just 94g/km, making it one of the least polluting diesels in production. If you think it must also be low on power and torque, think again. Power is 120PS which is good for the capacity but the torque number, 300Nm, is excellent. According to the official figures, the 1.6 i-DTEC is also potentially capable of 78.5mpg in the Civic. I myself saw an average of 58mpg and a lot of the time the car was ferrying four people and some heavy suitcases (the boot takes 477 litres or 1,378 with seats folded) so you could expect a realistic 60+mpg in normal day to day driving.
How does it manage to be so economical? A combination of low vehicle weight and an aluminium engine that has been designed with an obsessive focus on ultra low levels of friction. The 1.6 i-DTEC weighs 47kg less than the 2.2 and another 7kg has been saved with the introduction of a new six speed manual gearbox. According to Honda, internal friction has been reduced by 40% compared with the 2.2.
You can often tell a Honda from competitors for the smoothness and quietness of the engine and its diesels are no exception to that rule. This is an extremely quiet car. My passengers, who live in a country where diesels are rare in C segment hatchbacks, couldn’t believe the Civic was so powered. I also found the car to be fairly fast, even with all the extra weight onboard. Zero to 62mph takes 10.5 seconds but it felt more rapid than that.
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By GlobalDataIf I owned my test car, obviously I’d be pretty happy about not having to visit fuel stations too often. Other things that were big likes were the ingenious Magic Seats (there’s a great demo of them here – scroll down to Play With The Magic Seats) which fold quickly and with the barest minimum of effort, the crystal clear LCD instrumentation, a steeply raked windscreen and a general panoramic view all round from the driver’s seat, loads of headroom and legroom in the back, and just the most terrific gearchange.
What a shame you cannot have an automatic gearbox with the 1.6 diesel. That has got to be losing Honda loads of potential sales in the permanently clogged south of England. I know the conventional wisdom is that The British don’t do autos in small and family sized cars. Nonsense. Hopefully in a few years’ time this curious lack of transmission choice will have been remedied, in the same way that A/C is now fitted to so many mass market European cars (a decade ago it wasn’t, and the then supposedly conventional thinking said people wouldn’t want it). In the Civic’s case you can’t even blame the potentially higher CO2 number as the manual car’s average is so low. Surely Honda could keep a future diesel-auto under 100g/km and thus not lose fleet sales.
Enough ranting about customer choice and on to what I love about the Civic. I reckon this car has great looks, especially from the front. And is it only me who can spot one way back in his rear view mirror due to what seems like the brightest DRLs of anything on the motorway? The depth of the paint on my test car was something I kept noticing, and as ever with a Honda, the build quality was first class. Something you might want to consider if you’re thinking of buying a Civic in the lowest SE model grade: those huge pieces of dark plastic that cover the wheelarches will make your 16-inch alloys look puny. Go for the dearer ES or EX trims.
The car I tested was an ES-T (an ES with SatNav) and for GBP21,590 that brings with it front fog lights, dual zone A/C, automatic wipers and headlights, cruise control with a speed limiter, a reversing camera, ambient lighting, leather covering for the steering wheel and gearknob, and alloy pedals. Go up to the EX and for a still reasonable GBP23,175, you gain a premium audio system with subwoofer, heated front seats, leather upholstery, and parking sensors at both ends. At the other end of the price scale, the base SE costs GBP19,400 and has quite a good standard spec: idle-stop, the Magic seats, climate control, four electric windows and heated mirrors.
We used to get the US-built Civic Hybrid in the UK but no longer. That leaves the 1.6-litre i-DTEC and the soon to disappear 2.2 i-DTEC, plus 1.4- and 1.8-litre i-VTEC four-cylinder engines. American Honda’s model range is now quite different to ours, though the 1.8 petrol is shared – there’s it’s the base unit, supplemented by a 2.4-litre I4 petrol. Whereas Honda sells the car as a five-door hatchback in Britain, and soon as an estate too, North America’s Civic is a two-door coupe or four-door sedan.
The basic platform, which was new for the current ninth generation car, is the same and all bodystyles share a 2,670mm wheelbase. The US, the car’s traditional largest market, was first to see a facelifted model. This was revealed at the LA auto show in November 2012.
It will soon be our turn to have an updated Civic, Honda having revealed the mildly tweaked hatchback at the recent Frankfurt motor show. Expect to see it in showrooms early in the new year, synced with the introduction of the new Tourer.
Apart from the introduction of the 280PS 2.0-litre turbo Type-R hatchback in 2015 – to be manufactured at Swindon for selected markets – Europe’s Civic range should be pretty much left alone now until the arrival of the tenth generation model in 2016 or 2017. Unless of course Honda decides to fit what is only its third ever diesel engine, a recently launched 1.5-litre four-cylinder, to the car. So far that’s only being made in India. I don’t see any reason why it would need to be imported to the UK or built here when the 1.6 is now perfectly tuned for our conditions.
Honda UK has had a far better year in 2013 than it did last year. Sales are up by 7.71 percent for the year to the end of August, though the market has climbed by 10.37 percent during the same period. Civic momentum is still building, and sales of the CR-V with the same engine are also rising – formerly that model had the same issue with the 2.2 diesel.
The third generation Jazz that was launched in Japan as the Fit earlier this month won’t come here until 2014 (as an import this time) as will a small SUV based on the same vehicle. The US had a new Accord last year but there’s still no sign of a replacement for Europe’s six-year old sedan and wagon range – will Honda Motor Europe bother to send us a successor? It certainly shouldn’t be a priority when the current car, good though it is, has only ever sold in modest numbers. It costs more than the Octavia, Insignia and Passat segment leaders and Honda has never been one to undercut rivals just to buy market share.
If 2013 has been a year of rebuilding for Honda in the UK and the rest of Europe, next year is looking brighter still, and most of that will be down to the addition of its excellent 1.6 i-DTEC diesel. It’s about time we saw this brand finally living up to the potential it has always had in the region – the cars have always been superb and loved by their owners for their faultless reliability, now the must-have CO2 numbers are there too, at last.
