Honda Civic 2006 Review

A firm called Honda makes high-revving, efficient and desirable cars that focus on the driver. The Accord Euro, for example, is a Honda. Similar but subtly different is a company that sells mainly in the US. Pronounced as Hahn-da by Americans it makes larger, more softly sprung vehicles with slightly ungainly styling and an agenda that's more domestic appliance than driver's car. The Accord V6 is most definitely a Hahn-da - and so is the new Civic sedan.

There's no longer a Civic hatch, at least not in Australia. Europeans get a Civic hatch built in Swindon, England, but Honda Australia says the impregnable British Pound makes that car too expensive for Australia. Instead we get a Thai-built version of the US-market Civic sedan. There's no reason to worry about its origins. This is no thrown-together takeaway. Build quality on both the cars we drove was very good, and difficult to tell from a Japanese made car.

Civic comes in three versions. The glamour model is the hybrid, which uses a 15kW electric motor in combination with its 1.3-litre 70kW petrol engine. And there's a luxury Civic Sport with a larger 2.0-litre engine developing 114kW. But most sales will be the 1.8-litre Civic VTi, which we drove on test.

It may be the basic Civic but with cruise control, power windows, air-conditioning and an MP3 compatible CD player, the VTi offers all the essentials of modern motoring life. It also shares a radical new interior with the rest of the Civic range.

There are two instrument panels, one in the usual place near the steering wheel and one further forward, just below the bottom of the windscreen. The forward panel contains a splendidly legible digital speedometer. It's one of the best we've used and the next best thing to a head-up display. It sits between electronic bar-graph style fuel and temperature gauges. The lower panel contains the odometer, tripmeter, various warning lights and the tachometer — the only traditional needle and dial instrument in the car.

The previous model's dashboard mounted gearshift has moved back down to a sort of plinth halfway between the dashboard and the floor, where it sits next to a stubby handbrake. Above them sit simple and straightforward radio and climate controls.

There's no attempt to disguise the overwhelming acreage of plastic trim. But it's good quality, well-finished plastic and well-designed, with no shortage of storage spaces.

Exterior design is not quite as successful to our eyes. Although the frontal treatment is striking, the body seems a little slab-sided with an awkwardness around the rear door and the wheel arch. It's the look of a car designed outwards from a set of interior dimensions, with the emphasis on practicality rather than desirability.

But the most serious design flaw shows up once on the move. The windscreen pillars are both elephantine and awkwardly angled. The need to do well in crash tests has made thick windscreen pillars the curse of many modern cars, but the Civic's are particularly bad.

Something about their angle and width seems to always put them in the way. A less serious but potentially annoying consequence of its design is that neither bonnet nor boot can be seen from the driver's seat, making parking a challenge.

Things are better on the open road — for a start the Civic has a distinctly plush ride by small car standards. The seats are plush with decent-sized bases, and it's quiet, with road and wind noise well controlled. There's little intrusion from the 1.8-litre engine once moving. The five-speed gearshift is light, in typical Asian car fashion, but has enough weight and positive feel for serious driving.

The steering wheel is a groovy, vaguely 1970s-looking item, slightly squared off and the same diameter as the wheel on Honda's S2000 sportscar. Unfortunately the power steering system it's connected to feels a little vague, although usefully direct.

Roadholding is not the Civic's forte. Although perfectly competent in dry conditions at normal speeds, it lacks the satisfying precision of a Mazda 3 or Ford Focus, or even a Holden Astra. It doesn't inspire great confidence in the wet or over challenging roads. The price of its placid ride is a suspension that's too soft for committed driving and leads to a fair bit of wallowing and leaning. It also feels under-tyred, with less grip than expected.

Despite the body roll and lack of sharpness there's a reasonably balanced feel to the handling — even though it lacks grip it doesn't feel terminally nose-heavy. But it's definitely more Hahn-da than Honda. But the engine retains most of the Honda virtues. Its willingnes to rev hard without sounding strained is a reminder that Honda began as a motorcycle manufacturer. Worked hard it's lively but in more mundane driving situations, such as climbing a long freeway grade in top gear, it can lack low-down torque. It redeems itself with very good fuel consumption. Car makers' fuel-use figures are often hard to match, but the 7.2 litres per 100km we saw in real-world urban driving was not far off Honda's quoted figure of 6.9 litres/100km.

The rear seat is roomy enough to qualify the Civic as a four-adult car; it's too narrow to carry five full-sized adults in comfort for any substantial distance. The seatback folds down, but in once piece. Split-folding seatbacks (standard on many cars, including the bargain-basement Proton Savvy) are reserved for more expensive Civic versions.

The folding seat makes the best of a disappointingly small boot. At 376 litres it is by Honda's own figures, 74 litres smaller than the previous model's boot. A high floor is the space invader. It's there to allow Honda to fit a full-sized spare wheel. Many will see that as an admirable exception to the trend towards space saver spares, but it does come at a price.

Also slightly disappointing is the lack of side airbags in the volume-selling VTi. They can be had for another $3500 in the $24,490 Civic VTi-L — or for $17,990 if you buy any Holden Viva. And no Civic model offers electronic stability control, an omission somewhat at odds with Honda's otherwise deserved reputation as a technological leader.

Honda Australia has ambitions to sell 12,000 Civics a year, nearly twice as many as it sold of the old model last year. Given the strength of the small car market and the Thai-sourced Civic's good quality and keen pricing it may well beat that target. Despite its faults the Civic is small car that drives like a big one.

Verdict: