Honda Civic Hybrid 2010 Review

Price Guide (recommended price before statutory and delivery charges): $34,490
Options fitted to test car (not included in above price): Nil
Crash rating: Four stars (ANCAP)
Fuel: 91 RON ULP
Claimed fuel economy (L/100km): 4.6
CO2 emissions (g/km): 109
Also consider: Toyota Camry Hybrid, Toyota Prius

Just like a smaller, hybrid version of the Accord VTi sedan, the Civic Hybrid is refined and comfortable, but Honda's petrol/electric version of the eighth generation Civic has been around since early 2006 and age is beginning to catch up with it.

The test vehicle came in a plain white finish, which highlighted the Civic's unassuming looks. It's a car that seems to present better in a darker colour, in the opinion of this writer. From the front the nose seems to be at odds with the rest of the car -- like Honda designers have bolted a medium-segment car's front end on a small car. The perception that the car looks bigger than it actually is won't be helped any by the interior packaging.

There's adequate headroom in the rear of the car, but less legroom to meet the needs of adults -- and rear-seat passengers won't find the room under the front seats to wriggle toes and stretch out. By contrast, newer cars such as Kia's Cerato are more commodious. The Kia is actually shorter than the Honda and, in South Korea it too is available in hybrid form -- very similar to the Civic in the way it operates, with the added advantage of running on LPG.

The problem for the Civic is not just the age of its design, but also the constraints placed on it by its hybrid-drive system. Rear seats won't fold down to provide additional luggage capacity, for example. It's not unique to the Civic among hybrids; it also applies to the Cerato hybrid mentioned above and while Toyota's significantly larger Camry does provides folding rear seats, there's little in the way of throughput from the cabin to the boot or vice versa in that car.

For some reason the Civic's boot floor is quite shallow, despite the use of a space-saver spare with nothing else beneath the floor. In total, the boot looks to hold about the same volume as the boot of a better-designed light-segment car, rather than the small car the Civic is.

The cabin shows restraint and common sense in its design. Seats were comfortable for the most part, but lacked enough length in the squab for this writer's needs. No complaints about build quality; everything looked and felt right, with the indicator and wiper stalks operating in a nicely damped action and the doors closing lightly yet securely from just a gentle push.

The driver's position is properly designed, with RHD-friendly control placement and instrument legibility, even down to the stability control disable button clearly marked ('VSA') and located on the dash to the right of the steering wheel, where it's in easy reach.

The windscreen wipers are activated from a conventional stalk, left of the steering column. They sweep from both sides of the screen and meet in the middle, which means that there's little left of the screen not swept by the wipers, other than the upper middle section of the screen, which is largely obscured by the rear-vision mirror anyway. It's clever and a significant win for safety, providing the driver a clear view to left and right.

For a car with a CVT, the Civic seems out of place with its PRND(S)L shifter. Where are the shift paddles or any other sequential shift system? This tells the first-time driver straightway that, hybrid drive system or not, the Civic Hybrid is aimed at very conservative buyers.

There may also be an element of cost-cutting in that design choice. Why bother with a sequential-shift plane for the transmission when most buyers will never drive the car that way? And the whole principle of combining small-capacity petrol engine with low-power electric motor -- coupled to a CVT calibrated to hold higher ratios longer -- actively works against sequential shifting.

The steering wheel is nicely shaped and the right size for the steering ratio and level of power assistance. It benefits from the instruments being arranged in a two-tier setup, with the tachometer viewed through the wheel and the digital speedo read over the rim of the wheel. The weight through the steering is consistent and provides some feel, letting you know during harder cornering that the front tyres are carrying the load.

Turn-in is aimed more at cornering without unsettling drivers -- drivers who prefer comfort and a sense of security over a direct response. That said, the Civic tracks through corners in an unvarying arc, even with the driver jockeying the throttle mid-corner, and the front-end grip is pretty tenacious by the standards of hybrid cars.

It goes without saying that the Civic's roadholding and handling could easily cope with more power -- but that's because it's not exactly endowed with tyre-shredding potential in the first place. No registered owner will ever try this, but give the Civic a full boot and it's actually fairly quick up to suburban speed limits. But due to the way the complex drive system operates through its continuously variable transmission, the petrol engine will take literally minutes of full-throttle acceleration to reach its redline.

It's not that the engine won't rev, it's more that the CVT is constantly adjusting ratios to suit the engine's torque curve and power delivery; so the car itself is gaining road speed the whole time, in practice -- despite hanging around an engine speed of 5000rpm. But Toyota's Prius delivers much more real-world performance -- and without the boredom of its petrol engine sitting on 5000rpm for an extended period. At least the Civic's 1.3-litre engine is quiet and smooth, even at those revs.

Around town and driven gently the Honda would activate its electric motor on hills when the engine was pulling less than 2000rpm. That was commendable, because that's when the electric power was at its efficient best and the petrol engine could work at its leanest.

Driving the Civic is a relaxed experience in the suburbs, because the engine cranks up from auto-stop like someone has released a flywheel connected to one end of a taut rubber band. There's no starter motor noise and very little vibration. It's also responsive to the driver releasing the brake for a fast start from a green light. Cleverly, if the driver feathers the brake pedal, as one would while approaching the rear of the car as it's about to set off from a standing start, the Honda's engine will continue to run -- without the auto-stop operating.

The CVT works well with the petrol engine (and the electric motor to a lesser degree) and the internal combustion engine is way more subdued than the engine in its sibling, the Jazz-based Insight we drove in Germany earlier this year. If only the Civic delivered us better fuel economy than 6.3L/100km or performance that was more like the Skoda Octavia 90 TSI's (also a small-bore four, but turbocharged and not supplemented by an electric motor).

Another consideration is the Honda's regenerative braking, which will recharge the battery to the maximum extent, but provides very little retardation. There must be a considerable amount of energy going to waste in this system as soon as the driver presses the brake pedal hard enough to pull up to a halt.

It's not like the batteries were constantly in need of replenishing either. The gauge measuring battery charge never showed the needle moving below half-charged for the entire week, so the Civic could have relied more than it did on electric power to supplement petrol power.

Those two operational parameters -- under-reliance on electrical power and inability to scavenge a large proportion of the available waste energy -- possibly contributed to the Civic's average fuel consumption during the week in our possession: 6.3 as mentioned above, versus 4.5L/100km over the course of a month, for the larger-engined and heavier Toyota Prius.

The Honda spent much of its time with us on freeways, where hybrids don't always excel, but the Toyota Prius this reviewer drove from Sydney to Melbourne a year ago was achieving a figure of 4.9L/100km while harried along at 110km/h with the headlights operating.

There is a way in which the Civic Hybrid mounts a case for itself: It's a car that doesn't scream to the world that it's a hybrid, it's easy to drive and small enough to park. The Camry Hybrid might be too large for some buyers and the Prius too expensive. If there's one car that may outgun the Civic Hybrid for practicality and price, it's very likely Honda's own Insight, due here before the end of the year.

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