I drove the new 2022 11th-gen Honda Civic

11th gen Civic is a car that had me excited when I first saw the pictures online once the car was unveiled late last year.

BHPian Vikram Arya recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

A caveat: This by no means constitutes a comprehensive review of the car but only my initial driving impression based upon my limited 75 minutes with the car on two different days earlier this week. For a comprehensive review, you would have to wait for the experts at the Team-BHP as and when this car becomes available in India which I hope does happen as I feel we have a serious dearth of good no-nonsense, honest to purpose sedans in India currently (I had high hopes from Skoda, however the 2021 Octavia has been priced so hopelessly that I have my doubt if Skoda would be able to move a substantial number of units/year).

The photographs were taken on two different days. I had the cars for about a grand total of 75 minutes & the pictures had to be taken under a bright sun as a result of which the picture quality is poor and I apologize for that. All these pictures were taken using a cellphone.

Touring edition

Likes

• Styling (in my limited view, not polarizing at all)
• Size (length has increased by 1.3inches over the last year's model which I don’t think is a bad thing from the Indian market’s perspective)
• Minimalist and elegant interior design (best cockpit in the compact sedan segment; period)
• Unobstructed view from the driver’s seat
• Ergonomics (everything falls to hands easily and you don’t have to search around for switches/knobs)
• Interior noise (minimal)
• 12 speaker Bose system on the Touring edition, a first in any Honda (even the base variant gets a Honda’s 8 speaker system)
• All digital instrument cluster on Touring edition (I was not expecting to write this as I prefer the analog type but the execution is the best I have seen so far)
• Top of the line safety suite (even the base model comes loaded with a huge number of active & passive safety functions as standard)
• Engines (well, there’s a reason why it doesn’t feature on the top of the list but honestly among all compact sedan, this is probably the best mill)
• Good low-end torque in both the 1.5 Turbo & NA 2 litre engines
• Absence of rubber band effect for the most part, especially on the 1.5 ltr Turbo motor (as long as you don’t floor it from standstill)
• Tire size ( for once the car does not feel under-tired at all)
• Reasonable boot capacity
• Fit & finish

Not so great

• Absence of a manual transmission (to be made available on the hatchback which will become available later in the year followed by Si & Type R but these probably wouldn’t make it to India)
• Engine gets buzzy at the top end (especially the 2 litre motor)
• Seats could have been a bit better (now I’m nitpicking)

Note: For the first time I was struggling to compile the list of negatives; the car is so good.

Touring edition

Foreground

Honda Civic, a global bestseller all over remains somewhat of an enigmatic car in the Indian context and for that, we have Honda India’s flip flop attitude towards the Civic to blame which was partly driven by Honda City’s product positioning and the way it was pitched to the Indian car buyer as the best car money can buy at that price point (in all fairness I would actually agree with that proposition to quite an extent). The trouble arose when Honda India wanted to introduce the Civic in the Indian market and it found it to be a bit challenging to justify its stratospheric pricing to the Indian customer where the quantum of money that one spends should be in direct proportion to the size of the car that you get.

In most of the developed world, Honda did not have to face this conundrum as Civic is basically an entry-level sedan that competes with Toyota Corolla, VW Jetta, Mazda 3, and Nissan Versa, and so on and so forth. Civic is fairly close to the City as far as the dimensions are concerned, however in terms of the drivetrain, the two cars differed significantly and that was the saving grace for Honda India.

We saw a few generations of Honda Civic in India. However, currently the car remains unavailable in Honda’s Indian portfolio and we do not have any confirmation from Honda whether the eleventh generation would be introduced here.

I had the good fortune to buy a brand new Honda Civic (8th gen) back in 2008 when I finished my Master's & was on the lookout for a car. Though common sense implied that I buy a pre-owned car as I had just started working, however when it comes to cars I allow my heart to rule the head ergo, I decided against it and bought a brand new Civic. It had a manual transmission with a 1.8 ltr SOHC 4 pot motor that put out 140 BHP. The car was a hoot to drive and the engine revved like crazy. For me, it was a big jump as the last car that I owned was a Ford Ikon (another one of my all-time favourites) back in India. Later in 2008, I bought a Dodge Charger and wanted to pass the Civic on to my wife but she refused to drive a stick shift and we bought a 2010 Santa Fe for her. With a heavy heart, I sold the car with only 29K on the odometer in 2010. Though I did not want to buy another sedan in the later years, I always kept track of how the Civic was evolving and to say that I was disappointed by the subsequent iterations would be an understatement.

11th gen Civic is a car that had me excited when I first saw the pictures online once the car was unveiled late last year. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the design language that Honda had used had cleaner lines and the understated elegance without the overtly busy design that the previous generation suffered from (again my humble opinion).

Base LX Variant

As I write this report, 11th gen Civic is being manufactured in US (Hatchback only), Canada (Sedan), Thailand & Japan. The car became commercially available on June 16th in North America & I called up a few dealers on 17th and found that only 3 dealers had received a couple of cars so I scheduled appointments at two different dealers on June 22nd & 23rd (owing to the prevailing circumstances car dealers are only allowing a visit by prior appointment). What I have summed up below is my initial observations/driving impression and by no means a comprehensive review of the car.

Continue reading Vikram Arya's review of the new Civic and BHPian comments for more insights and information.