Road Test: Honda Civic 1.6 I-DTEC SE

Price as tested: €23,795

+ Terrific engine, quality, space, practicality
- Dynamically not as sharp as it should be
= Lovely engine but doubters will still need convincing




Just over a decade ago, Honda didn't make Diesel engines. In spite of the great advances that, even that long ago, had been made in making diesels smoother, gruntier and more refined, Honda regarded them as anathema. Too noisy, too smelly and just not us, old boy. We'll stick to high-revving, lightweight VTEC petrol screamers, thanks.

Given that, it was a pleasant surprise that the original 2.2-litre i-DTCi engine was, and remains, so good. And if it has taken this long to get a second, more compact, Honda diesel to the market then at least, as with John Mills' pint at the conclusion of Ice Cold In Alex, it was worth waiting for.

Honda's new 1.6-litre i-DTEC engine makes its debut in the Civic, a car which pushed Honda Ireland's sales up by a healthy 12% last year, against the background of a stagnant market. And given that the Civic's lonely 2.2-litre diesel, even with its Band A emissions, excluded Honda from the bulk of the c-segment market, its expectations for the new engine are commensurately high. It's expected not just to expand overall Civic sales, but to do so while simultaneously taking over most of the 2.2-litre's sales.

Just as well then that Honda's engineers haven't simply sleeved-down the old 2.2 to make a 1.6. The engine is new from the sump up and Honda claims that it's the lightest engine in its class. So sylph like is its weight that Honda has retuned the Civic's front suspension and steering to take advantage, with claims for improved feel and agility being made.

Honda makes great claims for its refinement, even fitting an active acoustic damping system in the cabin, and the result is indeed hushed; you only get a distinct diesel clatter when you venture beyond 2,500rpm. Better again is the performance. The 120bhp Honda gets from its 1.6 makes mincemeat of the similarly sized engines in the rival Ford Focus and VW Golf (95 or 115bhp and 105bhp respectively) and the i-DTEC engine makes a decent fist of convincing you that it's much larger in capacity,thanks to largely lag-free delivery and solid mid-range punch.

We doubt you'll ever match the claimed fuel consumption of 3.6-litres per 100km (78mpg) in real world driving, but on our brief test drive, we got 4.6l/100km (61mpg) so it's not what you'd call thirsty. 94g/km bests the standard Golf (albeit not the BlueMotion model) and Focus and means you can tax your Civic for €180 a year.

So, with the engine now bang-on the par for the class in terms of size, and potentially even class-leading in terms of its overall performance, can the Civic now meet the mighty Golf and Focus head-on?

Well, not quite but it's closer than it was before. The current Civic, when launched, seemed too detached in its driving style and too crude in its ride quality. Honda's decision to continue with a simple torsion bar rear suspension brings boons in weight, affordability and space efficiency, but it's simply not at the races when compared to Ford and VW's more complex multi-link rear ends.

So what happens is; you barrel happily into a corner in your shiny new Civic, enjoying the recalibrated steering which, while still a touch too light, feeds back a little better than before. You also notice, and enjoy, the fact that the lightweight engine means the front end is more eager to sniff out the apex. The Civic lacks the outright driver involvement of some rivals, but it's still a fun drive.

And then you hit a mid corner bump and feel the rear end bang, hop and skip. It's not as bad as the reaction you'd get from the VW Beetle (which we tested this week also and which has a similar rear suspension arrangement) but it still feels unacceptably crude compared to the best of the competition.

Which is a shame, as the rest of the Civic feels so sophisticated. I've heard some colleagues complain that the cabin feels 'too Japanese', and I can kind of see the point. The multi-level displays, a mix of analogue and digital, won't be to all tastes and yes, the surfaces and materials don't have that final Volkswagen-esque sheen of touchy-feely niceness. But the sense of sheer quality in the assembly is easily noticed. Honda has better chops when it comes to bolting together cars that last than most (even the vaunted Germans, and notwithstanding the 2.2 diesel's habit of having an expensive flywheel-related off-day) and you can feel that sense of quality in the cabin. It's very much a love/hate thing (as is the exterior styling) but for what it's worth, I like both. It's more distinctive by far than either a Toyota Auris or Mazda 3 and feels more special than a Focus or Golf. It's also more versatile, with a big cabin and those clever back seats that either fold flat horizontally or flip up vertically, like cinema seats. The payload options are almost infinite and it's the only mid-size hatch with which you'll feel truly smug in the IKEA car park...

Prices start from €23,975 for the SE model; a touch more than a Focus or Golf but it is better equipped, including climate control, stop-start and alloys as standard. If you buy into its quirkiness, or Honda's engineering-led image, then it's a more interesting alternative to the mainstream masses, and one with a deeply impressive new engine. John Mills was right, all those years ago...

Facts & Figures
Honda Civic 1.6 i-DTEC SE

Price as tested: €23,975
Range price: €21,895 to €30,395
Capacity: 1,598cc


Power: 120bhp


Torque: 300Nm


Top speed: 207kmh


0-100kmh: 10.5sec


Economy: 3.6l-100km (78mpg)


CO2 emissions: 94g/km

VRT Band: A2. €180 road tax


Euro NCAP rating: 5-star; 94% adult, 83% child, 69% pedestrian, 86% safety assist

News: Honda's new Civic diesel to hit 78mpg

Honda is at last starting to reveal technical details of its upcoming Civic 1.6 iDTEC diesel and the first figures to emerge are somewhat startling. How does 94g/km and 78mpg grab you?

Honda's official figures are 3.5-litres per 100km (which translates as 78mpg) and 94/km, putting it well ahead of the current Ford Focus 1.6 TDCI in emissions and consumption terms too. It's ahead on power too, with 118bhp, against the Ford's 115bhp and the Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion's 105bhp. Mind you, the new MkVII Golf will beat the Civic's Co2 figure, with an 88g/km average, but the Civic's rating is still a massive step forwards for Honda.

You can currently buy a Civic only with a 2.2-litre diesel engine, which is frugal enough to emit just 110g/km of Co2 and set a 4.2-litres per 100km average (64mpg).

Sales of the new 1.6 diesel Civic will start in the new year, and they'll be followed by a version of the new CR-V SUV using the same engine, which is expected to record equally startling emissions figures of just 99g/km.

News: Honda teases new Civic estate

Honda has teased us with a sketch image of an upcoming Civic estate. The picture, flashed up on the screen at Honda's stand at the Paris motor show, seems to show a tightly-contoured compact estate with a distinctive wraparound rear-end.


Honda is keeping tech details close to its chest for the moment, but when a pre-production version gets an airing at the Geneva show next March, expect it to have a slightly stretched version of the current Civic hatch's platform and Honda's all-new 1.6 diesel engine which should push emissions well below the 100g/km mark.

Road Test: Honda Civic 2.2 iDTEC ES

Price as tested: €25,820

+ Looks, quality, space, clever rear seats, engine, economy
– Over-light steering, a touch pricey
= Deserves a sharper chassis, but quality and engine win you over

To say that the 2006 Honda Civic was a bolt from the blue would be an understatement roughly along the lines of “Liverpool in the eighties were a bit win-y” or “NASA’s Saturn V rocket; that’s a bit quick, innit?”

We had become used to Honda producing beautifully engineered, but relatively conservative cars. Outré styling and dramatic flourishes were not the Honda way. But then the Civic arrived and buried all of that, forever it seems. Space-age styling, dramatic proportions and an interior that, you’ll forgive the David Hasselhoff quote, looked like Darth Vader’s bathroom meant that the Civic left behind its plain-wrapper past and became the most distinctive family hatchback around.

Of course, that was all surface treatment. Under the skin, the Civic was actually a bit of a backward step, ditching the old model’s sophisticated wishbone suspension for simpler, cheaper struts and a torsion bars. It meant for cracking interior space but also for a driving experience that felt cruder and less well settled as the years went on and the competition hotted up. It also had a diesel engine that could only manage Band C emissions and the styling had started to arguably age quite badly.

So, quite a list of issues for the all-new Civic to work on, except it’s not actually all-new, merely instead a thorough re-working of the old one. The suspension is still struts and torsion bars, the flip-up “Magic” (and they really are) rear seats remain and the split level dashboard owes as much to the Blackpool illuminations as it does to fighter aircraft displays.

The first and foremost thing you notice about the new Civic though is its styling. Nothing new there, of course, but by sticking to the same rough template as before, yet honing the details, Honda has made the Civic look fresh and exciting again. With the split rear screen, ultra-sharp looking tail lights and finely cut lines and arches, we reckon it’s even better looking than before. There is a slightly droopy piece of plastic in the grille/bumper at the front, but you will be thankful of that when it comes time for parking knocks.

Inside, the style is again similar to what went before, but with better detailing. Certainly, the quality of the materials used has stepped up a notch, and the displays are clearer and simpler. There is one oddity though; the multi-function trip display (which incorporates a colour reversing camera on our ES spec model) allows you to do something as arcane as correct the outside temperature display (presumably after having consulted Met Eireann) yet it can’t display fuel range and average consumption on the some display, requiring you to click through about three sub-menus just to toggle between the two.

Mind you, you won’t actually need to be paying all that much attention to those two readouts as the updated 150bhp 2.2-litre iDTEC diesel engine has really, seriously raised its game. It’s a little bit noisier than the very best in the class (step forward the VW Golf’s 140bhp 2.0 TDI) but how does a claimed (and very realistic) 4.2-litres per 100km average economy figure and a Band A-friendly 110g/km Co2 figure sound? Better than the engine itself? Oh yes.

But this is not some poverty special with gutless mid-range and astronomical unit gearing. Work the lovely, snicky six-speed manual gearshift (a seven-speed DSG-style box is coming eventually) and the 2.2 displays a wonderfully muscular side to its character, flinging the surprisingly hefty 1,367kg Civic along. It is, in short, an absolute belter of an engine.

Sad to say though that the chassis doesn’t quite match it. The Civic feels, and is, very sure footed and rides with a firmly-damped assurance that feels more Germanic than Japanese. Relatively small wheels and high profile tyres on our test car doubtless helped with that. But the steering is a let down, lacking any of the meat and feedback that comes as standard with any Golf or Focus, and feeling disconcertingly Atari-like. Get used to it, learn to trust it and the Civic will go where you want it, hold a tenacious cornering line and never displays a bad handling habit, aside from a tendency to allow the unloaded inside wheel to spin exiting a tight junction. But it refuses to engage the driver.

That’s not helped by a driving position that feels too high-set, with the chunky wheel sitting in your lap, and seats that are just a touch too narrow across the seatback, even if they’re mostly comfortable.

Still, there are things that the Civic does very well. Like almost any Honda, it’s exceptionally well made and transmits that through to you by way of silky smooth surfaces in the cabin. Even the harder plastics on the dash, of which there are a few, feel better than most car makers’s high-grade stuff.

Then there’e the refinement. Aside from an occasional engine gurgle or clatter, there is very little noise allowed into the cabin. Tyre roar and wind noise are very well suppressed.

And then there’s the space. It does feel a little tighter than the old Civic, but there’s still good space to be had in the back, the ‘Magic’ seats allow you more versatility with how you carry your cargo and the boot is big (477-litres), square and deep.

So, where does the Civic fit within the fiercely competitive family hatchback world? Well, it’s not as engaging to drive as either a Focus or a Golf, but it sits well ahead of the likes of the Peugeot 308, Citroen C4, Toyota Auris or Renault Megane when it comes to the quality of its build and the quality of its engine. Of course, it damn well should do, as the cheapest diesel model, at €22,445 is a good €2k more than even the most expensive diesel competitor. Our ES test car clocks in at €25,820. That will improve a touch when Honda’s new 1.6 diesel arrives in 2013, but Honda always prices its products at a distinctly premium level.

Is it worth it? On balance, yes, but only if you’re happy to pay the premium demanded. We love the styling, the quality, the engine and the refinement, but truly keen drivers will be better served elsewhere, and more cheaply to boot.

Facts & Figures

Honda Civic 2.2 iDTEC ES
Price: €25,820
Range price: €21,395 to €28,825
Capacity: 2,199cc
Power: 150bhp
Torque: 350Nm
Top speed: 217kmh
0-100kmh: 8.5sec
Economy: 4.2l-100km (64mpg)
CO2 emissions: 110g/km
Tax Band: A. €160 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: Not yet tested