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Our firm has several Hondas on the pool car and “owned” company car fleet. Honda has supplied a number of these Civic Hybrids for evaluation by prospective future company car drivers, so I took the opportunity.....

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This swish-styled family car comes in at something over £16K. By the time you’ve added leather, bass boost and a smart paint job you’re nudging £18k - where the base model Accord joins the ladder (though not an auto). However, for that money, you’re getting a car that has as much passenger space as an Accord, with several of the luxuries seen hitherto only in top Accords and a lovely silky silent smooth CVT. It has good looks, is exceptionally quiet when driven normally up to a fair bit over the legal limit where it would cruise in opulence all day. In town and country it demonstrates adequate, if not sparkling performance and the promise of 50 mpg with just a little restraint. It also has a sports mode that gives a very responsive throttle, but at the expense of a lot of fussy noise intrusion and, probably, economy, but it lacks a couple of fundamentals and options that might dissuade a top Accord driver from “trading down” (no electric seat adjust, no Satnav), and a rather inadequate boot space for such a large car.

The sound system is crisp and clear, but needs an (expensive) bass boost pack for completeness, while cabin climate is easily controlled and demisted as required. Blind spots and parking are likely to be the biggest worry for most owners.

The marque promises reliability. The car has a performance/noise compromise where, on non IMA (Integrated Motor Assist) 1.4 Civics there is worse performance, and on larger engined versions, better quiet performance but no promise of such economy - and neither have such a luxurious cabin, or a “proper” auto. NiMH batteries are lifed components. I’ve no idea of the replacement cost, but it’s likely going to bump up the usual big service bill quite a bit when a cam belt is changed!

ON THE FORECOURT

Quick glance outside: Sleekness punctuated by one monstrosity.

From the side, the exaggerated windscreen rake is the most striking feature, akin to some of the concept cars of the eighties, with the small front quarter lights filling what would otherwise be awkward “A-panels”. Nice chunky chromed door handles complement the flush sleek disk alloy wheels. The monstrosity is the door mirror. This is an absolutely huge cowl with integrated wraparound indicator lights and containing the adjustable heated two-zone glass. Despite being colour-keyed it represents a large pimple on the otherwise blemish-free elevation.

Front on, it could so easily be a 2006 Prelude had they continued development of that model. It is as wide as the latest Accord, and of very similar style, but lower slung. The large clear plastic headlight covers are flush-fitting and contain two separate headlight bulbs each. Oh - and did I mention that the door mirrors stick out a long way?

Looking at the back of the car the subtle badging “Hybrid” on the lower right is the only clue that this is a special Civic. The boot and lighting clusters are all typical, with the notable improvement over the Accord of including symmetrical clusters, offering joint reversing lights, albeit with only the offsite fog light bearing a bulb. One can check one’s parting in either door mirror.

Quick glance inside: Inviting and revolutionary for a family car.

It looks sufficiently conventional to not be off-putting to a conservative driver who changes cars infrequently, yet sufficiently different to attract the “must have latest” brigade. The instruments are two-tier. The conventional binnacle houses a large analogue rev counter incorporating electronic digital odometer, trip and computer readout is flanked by modern equivalent of ammeter and voltmeter (more later) and temperature gauge, all of which are pseudo analogue, crafted from a bar graph of lights. The upper binnacle is set well forward in the space created by the very steeply raked windscreen and has a large digital speedo between the temperature and fuel gauges, both of which display in symmetrical, curved bar graphs. The temperature gauge has the secondary function of an mpg meter. to help educate people how to drive economically and encourage people to run into things while staring at the dashboard.

The rear seats are comfy, shaped for two, although a small one could sit in the middle for a short run as the lap belt and head rest are provided. There is adequate leg-room in the back even with the front seats well backward, thanks to the efficient overall use of space.

Quick glance in the boot: Small for a big car

The entry throat is fairly short thanks to the steeply-raked rear window. Depth is also reduced due to the battery pack taking up several inches behind the rear seat. For the same reason, the rear seat stays upright so long loads simply cannot be carried in this car. Height isn’t bad, but at the edges, the parliament hinges that support the boot lid lower several inches into the luggage space as one closes the lid. That could prove embarrassing if you think you’re compressing soft stuff close to the back when in fact you could be applying major forces into something best left unindented.

Quick glance under the bonnet: Servicing probably best left to a dealer

Although the rad cap, washer bottle, dipstick and other top-up orifices are nicely accessible for the daily (yeah!) checks, as is the battery and, with a little contortion, the CVT dipstick, doing anything else to this unit looks difficult. It may not be, but it looks like it is. The bonnet orifice is small thanks to the very steeply raked windscreen and the power unit is set back under the front scuttle. Although I’ve not had a look at the shop manual, I daresay if the power unit has to be removed completely it needs to come out from underneath.

GETTING ACCLIMATISED

Seats: Nice, but why no electric adjustment option?

The (optional) leather-clad upholstery is firm but comfortable. The driver’s seat is manually adjustable on runners with fairly fine steps in and out by lifting the bar beneath the front of the seat and sliding to the desired position. Up and down adjustment is by “pumping” the seat with a lever: this works fairly well, but the rake of the squab is fixed, and too high at the front, imparting a slight pressure under the front of the thigh. The back rest is adjustable from upright to almost horizontal. Front and outer rear headrests are adjustable to suit short and tall people, while the centre rear headrest (and seat for that matter) are for little ones only!

Major controls: Excellent with one reservation.

The steering wheel is small, very comfortable, with three spokes (3, 6, & 9 O’clock). It is tilt but not reach adjustable. The handbrake is nicely perched up in easy reach to the right of the centre console - a very pleasant contrast to where it sat in the hockey-stick gear lever Civic of a year or two ago.

The organ-pedal throttle is borrowed from the Accord, as is a nice left footrest.

The auto shift lever, conventionally placed forward and centre, is comfortable to use, with simple up/down P-R-N-D-S-L click stops, but having a rounded knob rather than a T-bar, with a discrete lever to lift to select positions where you have to confirm the movement. Being used to automatics this gave me no grief. However, for one who swaps a lot between autos and manuals, the feel of the gearlever is a subconscious reminder whether the left leg - or indeed the left hand - has anything to do. This might therefore be a source of confusion to the unwary.

Minor controls: superlative.

Everything one could possibly need in the driver’s cockpit is to hand. The familiar door mounted window & mirror controls that work so well in Hondas remain, as do rotating stalk primary lighting control and push up/down wiper stalk.

Important audio controls are also replicated on the wheel, easily reached by the left thumb. The right thumb controls a similar set of switches for the cruise control. Unlike the Accord, all wheel switches are subtlely lit at night.

The climate controls are simplicity personified, with all the confusion of last year’s top-range Accord overcome by reducing button count, easily seen clear icons and sensible grouping

The relaxing blue instrument lights come on dimly when you open the door and get in. They brighten when you insert the ignition key, and are supplemented further by a psychedelic gauge check reminiscent of the Enterprise sick bay instruments when you turn the key.

VISIBILITY

Forward and sideways: Good, but what a blind spot

Distant visibility forward, sideways and rearward is very good, though the transition from forward to sideways misses a huge blind spot thanks to the huge windscreen pillars. The wiper pattern leaves only small areas to the sides unswept (just as well as the pillars are so thick you need to dance back and forth to make sure you’ve not got a motor bike in the left and right blind spots at junctions, and to make sure you’ve seen anything approaching on right hand sweeps). The bottom of the screen is a long way off so that’s not too bad, but the top of the pillar is close, obscuring a serious angle.

Washers/wipers: Good verging on revolutionary.

The right stalk does all of this. The two-speed wipers plus intermittent setting is common place these days. Also standard is the variability of the intermittent setting (achieved here by rotating the collar around the right hand column stalk). The sweep pattern has been carefully designed to minimise the uncleared area to the side of the windscreen. Just as well as the pillars are thick enough without adding to the blind spot. Both blades are hinged on the outside, with a fair bit of overlap in the middle, providing superb coverage.

Backward: Excellent, but need to use the adjuster for parking.

The external mirrors, electrically adjustable and heated, are very good - they don’t look so grotesque from the inside - with the cylindrically convex extreme edges helping to spot the cars creeping alongside you. Rear visibility is good too. Judging its length for parking is difficult for one used to driving a conventional saloon; although sports car drivers will likely be at home. No way can one see the corners. Also anything particularly close to the vehicle is less obvious as the glass to metal line is slightly higher than one expects. Combine that with its huge width and parallel parking becomes a deliberate slow manoeuvre, including the lowering of angle of the nearside mirror, rather than the slot-straight-in-first-time that one acclimatises to quickly in most small cars.

At night: Good all round, but not exceptional

The headlights are turned on by rotating the left-hand column-mounted stalk switch. Dipped beam, with that stalk at rest toward you, is fairly bright and with a reasonably sharp cut off giving no dazzle to oncoming drivers or drivers in front of you. A dash-mounted control allows one to dip these further to compensate for heavy loads in the boot. The main beam, activated by pushing the left stalk forward (or pulling for flash in the usual way) is also achieved by conventional halogen bulbs and supplements the dipped beam, giving a well-lit drive on the open road, including advance warnings of hedgehogs from the nearside. No washer jets or wipers are provided though.

Rotation of the inner collar engages front fog lights. Rotation beyond either of the stops on a momentary basis alternately engages and disengages rear fog light, with the latter automatically going off (and not coming on again without intentional selection) after turning off the headlights.

Reversing lights are good. There is one both sides, and the zone behind each door mirror is nicely illuminated (provided one adjusts the mirrors down...).

ENGINE/IMA/GEARBOX/TRANSMISSION

I may have done the vehicle a disservice in segregating this section into sub-categories. IMA stands for Integrated Motor Assist - and the whole truly is integrated, including brakes! Nonetheless, here goes:

Power unit: Clever and a very good compromise.

The engine itself is a 1.35 litre. However, the output shaft is coupled through a motor-cum-dynamo before feeding a CVT gearbox. The motor/dynamo is connected electrically to a nickel-metal-hydride battery pack which sits neatly between the boot front and rear seat uprights. In simple terms, when power is demanded by pressing the throttle down, the engine is supplemented by electrical power to the motor, making the 1400 cc lump feel a bit bigger, and when one lifts off/brakes gently, the motor turns into a dynamo and uses the “free” forward motion of the vehicle to recharge the battery as the car slows down (or keeps pace on downhills). Electronics, sensors, and lots of clever algorithms abound to make this all work pretty seamlessly. Starting the unit is ultra smooth and as silent as a tow start, although this uses a conventional 12V battery (and possibly a separate starter motor).

Transmission: Ultra-smooth, but a missed trick.

As one would expect, being stepless this is impeccably smooth. Putting the lever into D, the unit takes perhaps a full second to prepare for forward motion. Lift off the brake and there is the slight and reassuring creep. One can maintain a near silent progress on a light throttle at or around 2,000 rpm right up to mid fifties, reaching perhaps 3,000 rpm or thereabouts at the legal limit. In this “gear”, depressing the throttle to the floor gives not only full battery assist, but a rise in RPM to provide a reasonable turn of acceleration, with a fairly well subdued inlet growl that, once up there, remains at an almost constant note until one lifts off, thanks to the CVT continually adjusting ratio to maintain around 4,500 rpm as road speed increases. As with other CVTs, the unnerving lack of a true kick-down belies the fact that the car really is accelerating. This mode, whilst adequate for most situations from a performance perspective, could never be described as lively.

Another subtle fuel-saving feature is the way the system cuts out completely when stationary, eg at traffic lights, for more than a couple of seconds after the engine warms up. Release the foot brake and the engine starts immediately; ½ a second later, you’d never know it had switched off. This can be slightly unnerving, and it might just mean you miss a gap due to either psychologically thinking you have stalled, or the existence of the short delay as the engine fires back up. To overcome this, if a gap is going to be tight, lift off the brake to keep the engine running/restart it, but use the handbrake to hold the car, doing a conventional start into the gap by pressing the throttle and releasing the handbrake.

If instead of “D” one selects “S”, the unit takes on a whole new persona. Even at low throttle settings, revs stay around the 3,500 - 4,000 mark, with noise levels elevated quite dramatically to the extent that the unit sounds fussed with normal progress. In this mode, flooring the throttle is much more responsive thanks to the engine already being on cam. The battery assist cuts in, and the engine revs sweetly up to the red line, with an appreciable inlet growl reminiscent of the old Alfasuds of the early seventies. Whilst even this acceleration would not suit those more used to big engines, it is well up to the 1.6 Civics of yesteryear, with a claimed 0 - 60 of 12 seconds - but at the expense of a fair bit of uncharacteristic noise in the cabin not usually experienced by Honda drivers.

As with the earlier Civic CVT I test drove a few years ago, I got into the habit of using D for 95% or more of the time, but actually pulling the stick back to S as I floored the throttle for any overtakes, returning it to D as I took my foot off after completing the manoeuvre. This gives the best of all worlds. I’m not ashamed to repeat my contention of the earlier CVT as it still applies.. Honda really have missed a trick here. With all the electronics in this car, surely it could include an “urgency” detector to do this transient shift to S from D automatically if one drives the pedal quickly to the metal. This would not only give the maximum acceleration at a demanding time, but also the reassurance of a “kick down”.

Lifting off “mid kickdown”, the Achilles heel of so many autos, is completely uneventful whether in D or S, although with S the engine braking is more pronounced thanks to the lower overall drive ratio.

“R” is conventional and low-geared, with the unusual quirk of the speed registering on the digital readout. Of course I resisted the temptation to see how fast I could make it read going backwards...

“L” does what it says on the tin - lock in low. This provides strong engine braking and would likely be best for towing up steep hills.

STEERING, BRAKES, SUSPENSION & HANDLING

Brakes: Predictable & reassuring despite the complexity under the skin.

Brakes are light and progressive, but evidently containing many “modes” of operation, all of which are transparent to the driver and passengers - unless they look at the gauges. Feathering the brake gives progressively increasing battery charging to decelerate the car. When the maximum charge rate is reached, further pressure on the pedal supplements the electromagnetic retarding forces with conventional pads. Jump on the pedal and one is rewarded with instant and strong response, helped no doubt by Honda’s version of the Mercedes-pioneered brake-assist. ABS is of course standard, although I never tested it out.

The handbrake is progressive and operated by a small lever just to the right of the gearstick.

Steering: Light and precise

The steering effort is always on the light side of what a “press on” driver might expect. . Nevertheless, one can always feel what the front wheels are up to on the move. Power assistance when parking is exceptionally good. The assist is electrical. Accordingly, the “deliberate cutout” when sitting stationary with foot on the brake does not cause any grief - and this explains also why I couldn’t find a power steering pump or a top-up reservoir for the steering fluid under the bonnet.

Handling/suspension: an excellent combination

The vehicle feels like it is on rails! The ride is by no means niggled thanks to NOT using low profile tyres, yet body roll is minimal thanks to the very wide track. I never deliberately bent it out of shape to see what it was like at the limit of adhesion, but I did feel a very slight understeer at one point on a bend that tightened. This was easily corrected naturally by paying on just a tad extra lock and lifting off - without the VSA (see below) obviously cutting in.

Although not put to the test, the car sports a “Vehicle Stability Assist” (VSA) feature - traction control to you and me - which is smart, in that, instead of automatically “lifting off” for you if you overcook it, it brakes the wheel that’s slipping - to all intents and purposes doubling as a traction control and a limited slip diff. It only lifts off the power if both front wheels start to slip.

LIVING WITH THE CAR

Sound system: Good sound let down by FM reception and lack of bass.

The fidelity and sensitivity of the speaker and amplifier system is truly superb, boasting an automatic volume control that subtlely raises the level as vehicle speed increases to compensate for the (very low) increase in road noise. Treble is crisp without a hint of sibilance, while bass is smooth and boom-free, though not deep or full, even when the bass control is set full on. Apparently a bass boost kit is available as an optional extra. I would like to try this as it may turn a good system into a near-perfect one. The full-featured RDS can be set to scan multiple transmitters for continuous reception and comprehensive traffic announcements. However, signal to noise on medium strength FM signals is slightly less good than one might hope for.

Oddments storage: Comprehensive.

Plenty of oddments storage bins exist including a nice deep centre console hinged at the rear, with two lower central storage compartments covered with sliding doors that look (and work) like miniature versions of those that used to cover 1960s TVs; one of these doubles as a dual cup holder with retractable plastic thingies that could keep a bored driver amused in a traffic jam. The glove box is small thanks to the air-bag, with a damped mechanism as it opens - a nice touch. Small rigid door pockets and a tiny coin pocket (I couldn’t get my full width hand in) complete the odds-and-sods holders in the front.

In the rear there is just one elasticated back-of-seat pocket on the near side, small rigid door pockets and a pull-down centre armrest with two cup holders. I doubt this would be adequate for family requirements.

Heating/aircon etc - climate control: effective and easy to use.

Temperature control is achieved by a simple rotary knob within in easy reach of the driver, ranging from 16°C to upper twenties. Dedicated buttons with clear legends give full manual control if required for fan speed (rotary knob), zones fed (keep pressing the zone button until it says what you want on the display), a/c on off, HRW on/off and recirculate on/off. All this can be reset to auto with a single button press of the large rotary temperature control. It even has two-speed bum-warmer controls for each of the front seats, mounted in the console where lesser manufacturers think it’s a good idea to mount electric window switches.

Cruise control - A license-saver.

This has been a standard top-range Accord feature since early 1980s. It was near perfect then. This Civic has the master on-off control on the steering wheel stalk and, since this is “fly by wire”, the cruise control doesn’t “grab the throttle pedal” as it accelerates. I would use it regularly if I was only a few points from a totting up ban. Other than that....

Interior lights: Nice.

Each visor has a vanity mirror that is covered. Open the cover and the make-up light comes on. Add to this a map-reading light each side in the front roof mounted console, with an intuitive centre global interior light that has a beautiful slow motion extinguish to complete the line up of "user" lights and you have a well-thought-out illumination system.

A lovely Honda touch, present in this model, is the subtlely lit ring around the key hole in the column which otherwise might be difficult to find at night. All switches are lit, even the door-mounted window and mirror switches, the bum warmer and steering wheel-mounted audio and cruise controls. The instrument binnacles are lit, even in the daytime.

WOULD I HAVE ONE?

If I had around £18k to spend on a car, and an income that would sustain a bigger engine, I’d prefer to have a larger lump under the bonnet and drop down seats for long loads (or a hatchback). However - and this is the rub - I cannot find one that meets that criteria without spending more serious money except a 1.8 Civic - and that doesn’t have the opulence that this does. If only they made the gearbox flip to S from D when the accelerator is fully depressed, they’d probably persuade me. Even now it’s on the short-list.

I wonder if Honda will ever do something like this on a bigger engined car?

Copyright Roger 2006