Honda Civics rank among the best driving small cars anywhere. All variants handle well, and the engines are strong if you're willing to wind them up and wring them out.Ride quality has improved over the years, but Civics have never been best in class when it comes to noise, vibration and harshness control. To address this, Honda introduced refinements for model year 2004, including better dampening material in the doors. While it still isn't the quietest car in its class, the Civic is nonetheless much smoother and quieter than it once was. At highway speeds, passengers have no trouble conversing in a normal voice, free of distraction from excessive mechanical racket or wind noise.
If you haven't driven a Civic since the end of the last century, you'll find that the current models feel more substantial and more upscale than the pre-2001 models. All Civics are pleasant to drive, though the EX and Si models can be downright fun thanks to more powerful engines and brisk acceleration. All variants are certified as ultra low emissions vehicles (ULEVs), or better.
Civic DX and LX models offer excellent fuel economy, delivering 32 mpg city and 38 highway with the manual transmission, according to the EPA. Unfortunately, acceleration is no better than tepid unless you are willing to keep the high-revving Honda engine bouncing near the red zone on the tach. The standard 1.7-liter four cylinder produces 115 horsepower, and most of the power and torque comes high in the rev range. The problem is more pronounced with the optional four-speed automatic, which can be slow to shift down and prefers it keep the engine turning at slower revs. You'll need more time and space to pass a semi-truck with the auto, and city fuel mileage drops to 29 mpg. In other words, the Civic DX and LX models are best with a manual transmission and a driver willing to wring the grunt as well as the efficiency from the engine.
The EX sedan and coupe deliver livelier acceleration because they are equipped with the more powerful VTEC engine. Driving a Civic EX sedan with the five-speed manual transmission is a sporty, satisfying experience. Throttle response is good at any speed because VTEC extends its torque across a broad power band. The manual gearbox is smooth and precise, with notched stop points between gears. The four-speed automatic also likes this engine much better, shifting smoothly and taking advantage of the extra torque.
Most fun to drive is the Civic Si hatchback. Around town, the Si is tractable and pleasant, pulling strongly from a fairly wide range of rpm. Honda's latest i-VTEC engine is tuned for torque. You can short-shift through the gears: snick, waahh, snick, whaah, snick, whaah, and still get plenty of go. Or, on an on-ramp or open road, you can keep the pedal down, snick waaaaahh!, snick, waaaaaahh!, and the Si really rockets at higher revs.
Downshifting short is fun, too. Barely push in the clutch pedal, and casually flick the lever into the next-lower cog. The Civic Si's transmission ratios seem perfectly matched to the engine, all quite close so a driver can keep the engine running in that higher-rev rocket zone at just about any road speed. And the Honda transmission is so tight and well machined that you can easily quick-shift up to the next gear without using the clutch at all. On the highway, the Civic Si delivers good performance for passing, accelerating from legal speeds to supra-legal speeds fairly quickly. The Si goes from 0-60 mph in a tick under 8 seconds, making it one of the quicker cars in this class. If you want better performance from a Civic, you'll have to do what so many young owners are doing these days: modify it with some of the hundreds of speed parts currently available.
Charge too fast into a corner and the Civic Si will understeer. That means the front tires lose some of their grip and the car wants to push off the outside edge of the road. This understeer comes by design, because it's actually a safe response to too much speed: a driver's natural reaction is to lift off the gas and slow down, and the car will generally tuck in and track nicely through the curve. That said, the Si will be traveling faster than other Civics before it begins to understeer excessively. Its tires, front and rear stabilizer bars, shocks and springs are designed for sharper handling, but the ride quality remains better than tolerable. And at 80-90 mph, the Si feels very stable. Transient response (left, right, left) is good, even at those speeds.
The Civic Hybrid is one of the best vehicles available for drivers interested in great fuel economy and low emissions. The EPA rates the Hybrid at 46/51 mpg on its City/Highway test, but the most remarkable thing about the Hybrid is the unremarkable driving experience. That's our highest compliment. If you like driving the regular Honda Civic EX sedan you'll like driving the Civic Hybrid. You'll need no extra investment of effort or energy, and the Hybrid will demand nothing extra from you.
Many people mistakenly think a hybrid car needs charging like an electric car. It does not. You do not plug this car in. The Civic Hybrid, like Honda's new Accord Hybrid or its more radically designed Insight, is primarily a gasoline-powered car. All three of these vehicles use an auxiliary electric motor that assists the small gasoline engine when extra power is needed for passing, accelerating, or climbing a grade. In the case of the Civic Hybrid, the 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine develops 85 horsepower and 87 pound-feet of torque on its own; the electric motor adds another 13.4 horsepower and up to 46 pound-feet (36 pound-feet with automatic transmission) when needed. When decelerating or braking, the electric motor works as a generator to recharge the 144-volt battery pack. In certain steady-state driving situations, the Hybrid will rely on the electric motor for power and the gasoline engine will be relegated to charging the batteries. The mode of the electric motor is indicated in a bar graph in the instrument cluster. A driver can use this information to minimize fuel consumption and maximize mileage, but basically all you have to do is fill the car with gas and drive.
The Civic Hybrid we tested had the optional continuously variable automatic transmission ($1,000), and that made a bigger difference in how it drove than did the hybrid powertrain. The CVT is an option on the regular Civic, so it's not an unknown quantity, though few people have experienced it. Essentially this transmission has infinitely variable gear ratios provided by belts running between moveable conical pulley wheels. The advantage is that it changes ratios smoothly and should always find the optimal one for given demands and speed, in turn optimizing both performance and fuel economy. The CVT also provides a strange sensation when accelerating hard, as the engine speeds up and the transmission seems to lag behind, as if the clutch in a manual transmission was slipping. Then the engine revs start to slow down as the CVT changes ratios, even as the car is moving faster. It's not a problem with the transmission so much as our sensibilities as drivers, which are built on the operation of conventional automatic.
Other than that, the weirdest sensation we experienced in the Civic Hybrid was when the engine automatically shut off at traffic lights off to save fuel. Fear not: as soon as you put the car in gear and touch the gas pedal the engine fires up without any hesitation. A small icon in the left-hand gauge indicates when the engine has shut off.
According to the dashboard readout, we averaged 40 mpg overall during our test drive. This is somewhat lower than the EPA ratings (48/47 mpg with the CVT), but most of it was city driving with a lot of heavy accelerating. Nonetheless, even if you routinely achieved the EPA numbers in everyday driving, there's a rub to the Civic Hybrid. If low cost of operation is a driver's primary motivation for buying, the Hybrid really doesn't make economic sense.
Compared to the Civic HX, which is rated at an impressive 44 mpg highway (and offers much better acceleration), a buyer will spend $5,360 more for a Hybrid at current prices. At current gasoline prices, that buyer will have to drive the Hybrid a million miles before he or she saved enough on gasoline to recoup the extra money spent at the dealership many years before. Moral of the story? Buy the Civic Hybrid for its uniqueness, novelty or to make a statement about your desire to conserve natural resources and protect the environment. Don't buy it because you think it's cost effective. It isn't.
The Honda Civic's braking performance is good, but short of best in class. Civic sedans and coupes have front disc and rear drum brakes, which isn't the optimal combo for short stopping distances. Yet even the all-disc Si hatchback stops longer than the best braking small cars.
Regardless, the brake pedal is easy to modulate in all Civics, and those with ABS are unflappable under hard braking, allowing the driver to maintain directional control in panic stops. Si and Hybrid models also come with Electronic Brake-force Distribution (EBD), which optimizes braking performance and stability by gradually moving more braking power to the front wheels as the car's weight tilts forward while stopping. It's not a common feature in this class.
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