Review
One of the cars you probably haven’t seen much of lately is the Honda Accord. While it’s still on sale, a long period with an unfavourable exchange rate for the Japanese-built car took away any impetus behind promoting it.
Add to that the lacklustre 2011 facelift, where CO2 emissions were reduced but failed to keep pace with rivals, it is easy to understand why it has all but disappeared from new car registrations.
In this era when downsizing is both encouraged and rewarded (often with lower running costs), Honda has given potential customers an alternative in the Civic Tourer.
Like other Civic models, the Tourer is built in the UK so UK (and European) sales aren’t exposed to currency fluctuations with the Japanese yen.
It is available with Honda’s 1.6-litre diesel engine (dubbed Earth Dreams Technology), which has superseded the 2.2-litre diesel in the Civic range.
As it’s so much lighter than the larger engine and has only a small torque deficit, there is no great loss of performance from choosing the 1.6 i-DTEC.
In S and SE models, the engine offers CO2 emissions of 99g/km, but higher-spec models such as our EX Plus test car are slightly higher at 103g/km, ruling these models out for fleets with a CO2 emissions cap set at 100g/km as well as adding an annual VED charge to these cars after the first year of ownership.
It’s good to drive. The engine is smooth, refined and responsive and I discovered the car felt sharp enough to select comfort mode in the adaptive damping settings.
The Civic Tourer has an exceptionally large boot both depth and widthways, comfortably exceeding the dimensions and capacity of the larger Accord.
Combined with a large under-floor storage compartment, the volume is 626 litres up to the tonneau cover with the rear seats in place, and an enormous 1,668 litres up to roof height with the rear seats folded.
This ranks it higher than most estates from the sector above, as well as among the very best in the lower medium sector, where the Civic sits.
The EX Plus model provides a huge list of equipment as standard that many might only expect to find on larger cars.
Parking sensors with a rear-view camera, adaptive damping, bi-xenon headlamps, DAB, leather trim with heated front seats and hard disk satellite navigation are all standard.
Unfortunately this pushes the price of the car up to more than £27,000, which even on a wholelife cost basis would need a spectacular residual value to compete with less well specified rivals.
Bob the Engineer - 28/07/2014 11:06
I tried one for a day and it crippled me, I am a large broad chap and the seats are far too narrow, the side supports around the shoulder area spent the whole day digging into my back. The engine was very good, but having tried several of the latest 1.6 diesel engined cars its in no way exceptional in refinement or power, quite average. In fact unlike the 2.2 CDTI and iDTEC engines that provide low down power but can be revved almost like a petrol engine and stay smooth and quiet, the 1.6 gets quite noisy and rough discouraging any of that sort of thing. Poor Honda can't get anything quite together these days, I tried the new CR-V 1.6 too, the seats were better than the hard ones in the previous CR-V but I have driven a canal boat with a rudder that had more feel and precision it was truly diabolical to put something like this on sale in 2014. The ride and handling were worse and the interior cheap, yet they were asking spec. for spec. far more than the previous model. Really Honda its time to stop rehashing old models trying to build a profit margin on a cheap developement and start again with a clean slate it will pay off in the long wrong as currently your playing catch up but falling ever further behind. (if you think I am being dramatic go down to a Nissan dealer and try some of their latest vehicles and then compare the prices)