Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC
- Our Honda Civic Tourer arrives
- Honda Civic Tourer is the quickest way to move house
- Hands on with the Honda
- Will our Civic get decent service at the dealer?
- The Honda Civic Tourer should come with a health warning
- Our diesel Civic struggles to deliver 70mpg
- Is our Honda Civic Tourer really worth £26k?
- How the Honda Civic Tourer taught me to stop hating Ikea
- Automatic start-stop – is it really worth it?
- Time to say goodbye to our Honda Civic Tourer
Our Honda Civic Tourer arrives
Does our Honda Civic Tourer have what it takes to grab drivers downsizing from an Accord and poach them from rival load-luggers?
Date: 7 October 2014 | Current mileage: 2349 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 54.9mpg
If you’ve got a young family and need a car that is spacious, economical and well made, then a diesel Honda Civic Tourer should definitely be on your list of cars to try. True, it might not be as fun to drive as a Ford Focus Estate, but I honestly can’t remember the last time ‘driver involvement’ was more important than getting the kids and all their paraphernalia stashed away safely.
And let’s face it, this is a family car – not a race car. So 120PS (and 300Nm of torque) is just fine. This isn’t a motor designed for people in a hurry. If you like braking hard, keeping the throttle balanced, cliping the apex and applying the power progressively as you wind off the lock, then go and buy a sports car. If you like getting prams, dollies, and prams for dollies in the boot, then read on.
We’ve gone for what we reckon will be the biggest seller in the range – the Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC SR manual. This comes with 17-inch alloy wheels, navigation, voice activation (not brave enough to try this yet) and full leather interior (wipe clean - no Ribena stains!). There’s also the adaptive damper system so you can firm up or soften the ride quality, as well as automatic lights and wipers, parking sensors, rear view camera… pretty much everything.
In fact, the only thing it doesn’t have is smart entry and start. Quite why, I don't know as it leaves an odd-looking blank button on the dash and leaves you fumbling for your keys with a toddler on one arm and some shopping bags on the other. If you want HID lights and interior blue ambient lighting, be our guest but you’ll need to upgrade to the terrifying named EX-Plus. We were happy with £25,560 for the SR, plus £500 for the Twilight Blue Metallic paint.
The Civic Tourer's boot is pushchair friendly. And handy for guitars too...
So, what are the family’s first impressions of our new estate? Pretty positive, actually. The looks have been a bit of a talking point, but I, for one, am a big fan. Having grown up with estates that have basically been a large box on wheels (Volvo 740 – boxy but awesome), it’s nice to be driving around in a stylish load lugger.
Not only has Honda thought about the exterior, they’ve also given plenty of thought to the interior. I’m sure there’ll be more to say about this as I rack up the miles, but the Civic is one the most comfortable cars I’ve ever driven (although I do spend quite a lot of time in old cars, so perhaps that’s not hard). How about this, then – it is the only car I’ve ever driven where I don’t get a numb bum on long journeys.
Speaking of which – long journeys, not bums – it was only a matter of days after the Civic turned up that I had to put in a 400-mile, eight-hour drive from Cambridgeshire to Lancashire to pick up a new amp for my guitar. With a fairly clear road, I slotted it into sixth gear, engaged cruise control at 60mph. I put the car in ‘eco’ mode, sat back and waited to see what 72mpg looked like. Sadly, the best it managed was 58mpg. Not bad, but I was hoping for better.
Still, at least I got a chance to try out the load space – the Civic has a class-leading 624 litres. What does that look like? Well, we’ll find out a bit more later when we take it on our family holiday over half-term, but, for now, it’s definitely enough to fit in a guitar, two-speaker cabinet and a stonking (but very loud) Marshall amplifier.
There’s plenty of things in the Civic’s favour, but the competition is pretty stiff. Does our Honda have what it takes to grab downsizing Accord drivers and poach sales from Ford, Volkswagen and co? We’ll find out over the next few months.
Honda Civic Tourer is the quickest way to move house
Need plenty of space but don't want to compromise on performance? Honda's diesel Civic Tourer could be just the car for you
Date: 21 October 2014 | Current mileage: 2671 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 51.1mpg
You can blame the television. When I was kid, I saw racing driver Rickard Rydell throwing a Volvo 850 Estate around in the 1994 British Touring Car Championship. Everyone else raced saloons, but Rydell and Volvo set out to be a little bit different. Seeing a quick brick spending most of its time on three wheels had a fairly potent effect on me – and the kind of cars I love.
Sure, Volvo moved on and raced the 850 saloon the following year. But I didn’t – all I ever wanted was a car that you could move house in, while outgunning people at the lights. So you can imagine that being given the keys to our long-term Honda Civic Tourer was like being given the keys to the playpen.
While it might not be as mahooosive as Volvo’s right-angled icon, it can still shift with the rest of them – both in terms of its load-lugging ability and performance. A brilliantly designed load-bay and the addition of clever ‘magic seats’ (which fold flat at the touch of a button) mean that our Tourer has taken all kinds of punishment over the last six month.
From large speaker cabinets for my guitar amp to a variety of flatpack furniture (and some pre-assembled eBay gems), the Civic has never grumbled or misbehaved. In fact, the impact on its performance of heavy loads is minimal. It was only when my wife yelled at me to slow down that I remembered we were helping a friend move house and not charging to the first corner at Oulton Park.
"Just nipping out to Ikea dear..."
Someone at Honda must share my love of racing estates, because not only have they given us a hugely capable car (1668 litres with the seats down), but they decided to go racing with it, too. In 2014, Honda Yuassa Racing contested the British Touring Car Championship not in a Civic hatchback, but a Tourer.
In January, the Tourer made its BTCC debut at Rockingham Raceway in Northamptonshire. At the hands of Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden, the Tourer proved it was a cut above in the high-speed sections and quick corners, before coming into its own in the tricky infield section.
And while the Honda on the grid is a inevitably a very different animal to the car on the road, any potential Civic Tourer purchaser won’t be disappointed. With the suspension set to dynamic and eco mode off, the steering is quick and the throttle is responsive. Whether it’s tight corners or long flowing bends the Civic stays planted with ample grip. And while it's 0-62mph time of 10.5 seconds might not sound that impressive, the car is certainly quick with enough torque from the diesel engine to make real-world driving and overtaking a hassle-free experience.
Our only minor criticism is the brakes. It’s not that they don’t stop you quickly and safely, it’s just that there is more pedal travel than we’d expect and that it’s a very soft grab, rather than the immediate snatch that we’ve come to enjoy from some of its German rivals.
Overall, though, the Civic is a joy on lightly-trafficked B-roads. Even with all your worldly possessions in the boot. A dog-guard wouldn’t have gone amiss, though – although there is a cargo load net that you can use to prevent prams and the like flying over the back seats and clocking you in the head.
Hands on with the Honda
Our Honda Civic Tourer takes a trip to the garage - and doesn't like having its screenwash topped up.
Date: 19 November 2014 | Current mileage: 3179 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 52.1mpg
As the editor of Honest John Classics, you can probably guess that I love old cars. But, more importantly, I love working on old cars - it’s bliss. Of course, my wife doesn’t quite see it like that. Each weekend was spent fixing something that was broken, buying a seemingly endless supply of spares, which meant owning and running an old car required deep pockets.
So she was over the moon when she heard we’d be getting a brand new Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC. And so was I - the thought of swooshing around in comfort with such creature comforts as air-conditioning, a radio and 70mpg was most welcome. In SR trim our Civic gets such fancy things as navigation plus an adaptive damper system so you can choose whether you want to ride along ‘normally’, ‘dynamically’, or in ‘comfort’ mode.
I did miss the tinkering factor, though. Saturday mornings are now spent browsing the classifieds with a hot cup of tea, eyeing up my next potential classic. Thankfully, not long after I got the Civic, I got an email informing me that Honda had spotted a potential fault and needed to replace one of the sensors – the manifold absolute pressure (or MAP) sensor to be precise, which lets the car’s electronic brain know how much fuel is needed for optimum combustion.
Sadly, I couldn’t replace it myself – but at least I got to take a trip to the garage and find out what the Honda dealer network was like. A quick phone call to John Banks Honda in Cambridge and the Civic was soon booked for its remedial work. The sensor swap took all of half an hour, they let me use the wi-fi so that I could look at old clunkers for sale, and they even cleaned the Honda (no small task after a half-term family holiday).
Curse you pesky screenwash lids...
Old habits die hard though and the other day I was out checking the tyre pressures, the oil when I remember the screenwash was running a bit low. I had the bonnet up within seconds and was ready to fill ’er up.
But this simple job quickly turned in to a bit of an adventure. You know how almost every car you’ve ever driven has a two-piece screenwash filler cap where the lid stays attached to the pipe thanks to a little plastic clip, loop or hinge? Not this one. After applying a decent amount of pressure to release the cap, it promptly pinged off and disappeared down into the engine bay.
No problem, I’ll just retrieve it from under the car. Curse modern cars and their plastic engine bay undertrays. After rooting through the messy draw in the house I found a torch and located the offending item, wedged under a plastic lip. I tried everything to retrieve. A small tube loaded with super-sticky gaffer tape, one of those random plastic grabbers. I even contemplated using a small child... Nothing worked – they were either too short or fell foul of the twists and turns needed to negotiate the Civic’s cramped engine bay.
In the end, I admitted defeat and called Honda to ask for a replacement item. In the meantime, I got to stretch my bodge muscle by creating a make-shift cap to stop the brimmed screenwash sloshing all over the engine bay. It involved a small freezer bag and an elastic band and works beautifully. If that’s the extent of the fixes required, then the Honda will be doing us proud. Although, I must admit that I can’t wait to get my hands on my next classic so I can spend Saturday’s happily fettling in the garage.
Will our Civic get decent service at the dealer?
How will Honda's dealer network perform when our Civic needs some attention? Keith Moody finds out
Date: 9 December 2014 | Current mileage: 3562 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 52.4mpg
If you’re considering buying a new car, it’s worth doing a bit of research into how its dealers perform. They may be all sweetness and light now, but will they be there for you when the going gets tough? A great way to do this by checking out our Good Garage Guide. Here you can find out how a garage really performs.
The quality of the dealer isn’t something we can always assess during our long term reviews, but in the case of the Honda we got lucky. A few weeks after delivery, we got a letter regarding a product upgrade... something you and I would more commonly refer to as a recall.
It seems that Honda had spotted a potential problem and needed to replace one of the sensors in the Civic’s engine bay. The part at fault? The manifold absolute pressure (or MAP) sensor to be precise, which lets the car’s electronic brain know how much fuel is needed for optimum combustion.
A few rogue items had been misreading the temperature and therefore misfueling the car. So I phoned up John Banks Honda in Cambridge and checked the Civic in with their technicians. Then I looked them up on our Good Garage Guide. It didn’t make for pleasant reading.
Our Civic Tourer's MAP sensor upgrade was completed quickly
One review had complained of rude and surely staff, so I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at the front desk. They were very helpful – offering me tea, coffee and access to their internet so I could at least get on and do some work.
After half an hour, my tinkering temptation took hold and I asked if it was possible to chat to the technician doing the job. The receptionist gave me an odd look, but after asking her manager I was taken through to the garage so I could take some pictures of the work being done.
The technician was more than happy to run me through the work being done and explained that it was actually this garage that had raised the fault with Honda HQ after a customer’s car had begun behaving strangely.
Swapping the sensor was a simple job, taking under 20 minutes. Most of the time was taken up cleaning the car – no mean feat after a week away with the kids. Within an hour, I was on my way home with a new MAP sensor, a clean Civic, and (for once) no complaints about the dealer.
The Honda Civic Tourer should come with a health warning
It's a great family estate, but our Honda Civic Tourer is not without its faults, as Keith discovers.
Date: 22 December 2014 | Current mileage: 3949 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 49.1mpg
OUCH! If I’ve said ‘ouch’ once, I’ve probably said it a hundred times in the four months I’ve been running our long-term Honda Civic Tourer. Why? Because this car is trying to hurt me. Whoever designed the interior clearly wasn’t thinking about taller people getting in the car. Because when you open the driver’s door, the normally curved corner of the dashboard splits in two to become a hard, pointy bit of plastic that is at the perfect height to clip the outside of your left knee as you climb in… unless you can swing open the door wide, which isn’t really possible in most car parks.
But it doesn’t stop there. Not only was the interior designer trying to speed up my need for knee surgery, he (or she) was also determined to mess with your mind via the Civic’s infotainment system. The way it interacts with your iPod (or other digital music player) is poorly thought out. Example. I’m driving to work and listening to the album Led Zeppelin II on the iPod but I suddenly want to listen to a track on Led Zeppelin IV, not II. Surely the system remembers what band you are listening to and is ready with a list of all the artist’s albums available on your device? Er, no.
So join me for a journey through time and space – and enjoy the game of snakes and ladders that is the Civic’s infotainment system. Off we go. First job is to select artist. A is for Abba. Hold the ‘scroll down’ arrow. Keep holding. Hold some more. Are were there yet? No, we’re only on D. Finally, you get to the ‘L’ section. Press Led Zeppelin, wait for the albums to load, find Led Zeppelin IV, press and select song. Success? Sadly not. Because the calibration on the touchscreen is ever so slightly out. Which means that rather than selecting an album, you’ve accidently pressed the booby trap button marked ‘return to current song’. Down the snake you go, back to the start.
And don’t forget: all the time you’re trying to select the song you want, you’re not giving the road your full attention. So over the last six months, I’ve listened to a lot of Abba, a lot of AC/DC and a lot of ZZ Top as these are the easiest artists to get to.
Why has Honda has hidden the fuel filler release flap in an awkward place?
Other mind games include the navigation's interesting approach to instructions. At first, I quite liked the fact that it wasn’t barking orders at me every five minutes. Until it said ‘slight left ahead’. This is Civic-speak for ‘leave the motorway immediately at this junction unless you want a 22-mile detour’. Sadly, I was overtaking a double-decker stack of lorries and was in the outside lane as I sailed past my exit. Obviously it’s my fault for not knowing where I was going, I know this. But if I had any sense of direction, I wouldn’t have specified the nav.
Honda will, no doubt, have responses to the points raised in this update. But if you’re buying a Civic – and we’d certainly recommend it because, overall, this is an excellent car – then it’s important you road test the ‘infotainment’ system as much as you road test the car because otherwise that’s a very expensive option you’ll be replacing with a classic £71.99 TomTom Start.
Our aim is to show you exactly what its like to own a Honda Civic Tourer – the good, the bad and the ugly. And the location of the fuel filler cap opener is downright ugly. While other car manufactures put the filler release button in easy-to-access places like on the dashboard or at the side of the driver’s seat, Honda have hidden it under the dash on the windscreen pillar above the bonnet release. Opening it from the driver’s seat requires a degree of flexibility that I don’t have, or getting out the car and crouching down in the dark, minding the spilt diesel at the filling station.
Let’s get one thing straight. With the Civic Tourer, Honda has made a really excellent family estate car that is one of the most comfortable cars I’ve ever driven with a great engine and pot-hole beating ride. And which has some fantastically smart features (like the folding ‘magic’ seats that operate at the touch of a button). But it is let down – badly - by a knee-busting interior, badly thought out infotainment system, and dreadful placement of the fuel filler cap opener. What a way to ruin a perfectly good car.
Our diesel Civic struggles to deliver 70mpg
It should do 70mpg, but Keith can't get anywhere near that in our long-term diesel Civic Tourer.
Date: 5 January 2015 | Current mileage: 4223 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 51.5mpg
Money’s tight. For the past six or seven years, we’ve been in the grip of a global economic slowdown that has put a squeeze on household budgets. And while we’ve had less money in our pockets, the price of fuel has been rising (until recently, that is). So how far a car can stretch a tank of fuel has become an important consideration for us. More so than usual.
But exactly how accurate are a manufacturer’s figures for how many miles per gallon their latest vehicle will give us? Naturally, some are better than others but – in the case of our long-term Honda Civic Tourer diesel – the predicted and the real are quite different.
According to the boffins at Honda HQ, our Civic should be able to notch up more than 70mpg on the ‘combined cycle’. That’s the mix of motorway and town driving that best represents the conditions that we face on a daily basis. But the truth is the best the Civic’s managed with me at the wheel is 54mpg.
I know what you’re thinking – I’ve got a heavy right foot and drive too fast. Far from it. With two kids and a hefty mortgage, I make it my own personal mission to squeeze every last drop of fuel out of a fill. So sad is my quest for economy, that I normally exceed the manufacturer’s mpg figures.
A 50mpg average means Keith's filling our Civic up more often
So why couldn’t I get 70mpg from the Civic? At first I thought it was it was because the car needed running in. It came to us with just over 2000 miles on the clock, so perhaps things would improve as the engine bedded in. They did, but not much.
I began to suspect the tyre pressures were amiss, but they weren’t. So I swapped to using premium diesel. That didn’t help, either. With no spare wheel, the car wasn’t carrying any excess weight – just three child seats and a few bags for life.
One afternoon, I did a little test. With a half a tank of fuel, I reset the trip computer and headed southbound on the A1. Clear skies and clear roads meant conditions were pretty good for an economy test. I engaged ‘eco’ mode, set the cruise control at 55mph and settled in behind a truck for an hour’s driving.
Surely this would bring about the magic 70mpg figure? Nearly, but not quite. The best I saw was 60mpg and – as the car was eased back into normal driving over the next day or so – this fell back to just over 50mpg.
Not that this is a bad total – just that it’s not what’s advertised. Is it just me? It could be. According to our Real MPG data, the Civic Tourer diesel achieves 94 per cent of its official figure on average, that’s 68mpg. Let's hope the economy improves over the next few months.
Is our Honda Civic Tourer really worth £26k?
You could say that paying £26,060 for our Civic Tourer makes it an expensive car. Keith Moody looks at what you get for your money.
Date: 20 January 2015 | Current mileage: 4546 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 51.2mpg
When it comes to price, our long-term Honda Civic Tourer could be regarded as an expensive car. After all, prices for the entry-level S diesel model start at £18,650. But before you dismiss it as being out of your budget, take a time to have a look at the spec sheet and you’ll find it’s actually a very well-appointed car.
There’s all the safety stuff you’d expect – such as anti-lock brakes, stability control and a host of airbags. But you also get a tyre deflation warning system, headrests that lessen the impact of whiplash and hill start assist for the start-stop technology on manual models.
Step inside the car, and you can expect an aux/USB jack plus steering-wheel mounted controls for the CD system and DAB radio, which are also standard. There’s also accessory sockets so you can charge you phone or run dash-mounted equipment like dash-cams and navigation. air-conditioning is also standard, as well as the 16-inch alloy wheels.
Move up through the range to S-T and you’ll add the navigation system. Up another step to SE Plus and you’ll get 17in wheels, front fogs, dual-zone climate control, auto headlights and wipers as well as cruise control with a speed limiter. The SE Plus also comes with front and rear parking sensors.
Cruise control, adapative dampers, alloy pedals - our Civic is loaded with kit
Our SR comes with all of aforementioned kit, as well as a few other treats. But at £26,060 (including £500 for metallic paint) our Civic Tourer really is an expensive car. So is all the extra kit worth it? Well, yes and no.Let’s start with the stuff we could do without, like the navigation system. We’ve written about its shortcomings before, so we’d be happy to strike this one off the options list. And as for the alloy foot pedals and stainless steel rear loading edge cover, we don’t think we’d miss these.
It’s a similar story with the voice activation. We’d hoped for a system that could recognise names of bands and find them easily on the iPod, rather than having to spend hours negotiating the Civic’s unwieldy scrolling system to try and find bands hidden in the middle of the alphabet.Sadly, this isn’t the case. It’ll stretch to a ‘play iPod’ or ‘radio off’ but that’s your lot. It won’t recognise names on your phone either, so it’s pretty much useless. We used it only to test that it works.
That’s not to sound from the stereo is bad. It’s not – it’s a fine system with a good mix of bass and treble. The hands-free Bluetooth connection to your phone is also excellent – rendering the speech of the other caller loud and clear. With a young family, the leather interior has been a real blessing.
Ribena spillages have been few and far between, but we’ve had a few Fruit Shoots go flying and plenty of raisins spilled. The fact that this debris can be easily vacuumed up and wiped down is brilliant.
Honda's excellent 'magic' seats, which fold-flat at the touch of a button, come as standard
One thing we really liked was the reversing camera. This is a simple bit of tech, but so many manufacturers get it wrong. The best bit? The fact that it works in the dark. Yep, they don’t on some cars.
But what about the adaptive damper system? Is this just a gimmick or something really useful? Well, that’s a tough one. We regularly used it, swapping from sport for those back-road blasts where quick (but safe) progress is possible and comfort for long motorway cruises. Granted, it stayed on comfort most of the time as ‘normal’ mode was too harsh.
Despite the use, we’re not sure it’s an option we would have actively spec’d. It’s not a deal breaker, that’s for sure. And it’ll be interesting to see how much the shocks for the adaptive system cost over the standard ones when the time comes for them to be replaced.
All in, I think the £21,570 SE Plus is probably the best Civic spec – as you keep the reversing camera and get cruise control, climate control – but you do miss out on leather.
How the Honda Civic Tourer taught me to stop hating Ikea
Suitcases, prams, flatpack furniture - our Honda Civic Tourer can handle anything, says Keith.
Date: 2 February 2015 | Current mileage: 4777 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 51.3mpg
Half-term. A phrase that strikes fear into the heart of any car. Images of boisterous children spilling Ribena over the seats, or endless stop-start traffic piled up on Britain’s motorways, and beleaguered father’s leaving Ikea with a half-open boot secured by nothing more than hairy string leave cars quaking on the drive. It truly is the stuff of nightmares.
Our Honda Civic Tourer, however, has taken all of this in its stride. Stop-start traffic is negotiated with ease, thanks to the car’s – er – stop start system and comfortable ride. And thanks to the leather seats, any nasty spillages can easily be mopped up with the baby wipes that you’ll always find stashed in its door pocket. And I’m a little bit proud to say that we even went to Ikea and won. And I haven’t claimed victory leaving Sweden’s vision of purgatory since I last owned a Volvo 740 estate.
What’s the Honda’s secret? The rather appropriate named ‘magic’ seats. I know what you’re thinking, every Civic comes with Paul Daniels and Debbie Magee as standard, but no. It’s even better than that. Flip one catch and the seat easily folds forward to create a completely flat load space. You don’t need to invoke the strength or spirit of Giant Haystacks and wrestle with them, or find somewhere to stash squabs and dismembered headrests. One click, and a gentle push – even my five-year-old daughter can do it. Now that’s magic.
And it’s not only the easy to fold flat seats that are a winner, the team at Honda have put plenty of thought into creating a really decent estate. For example, there’s even space to stow the rear loadbay blind in the boot so you don’t have to have it rattling about or leave it someone else’s garage. Then there’s the load bay opening – flat, wide, even. No silly lips to hump you shopping over, or awkward curves that compromise boot space. It’s a winner
Civic Tourer's 'magic seats' help create a flat loadspace.
And it looks good, too. It’s the same wheelbase as the Civic hatchback up to the central pillars, but thereafter it’s a different car. There’s a 235mm rear overhang to give it all the space. A best-in-class 624 litres to be precise – 117 of those under the floor, thanks to the removal of the traditional spare wheel and the relocation of the fuel tank under the front seats. With the seats down, you’ve got 1668 litres of space to fill.
But what about power? With a boot full of flat-pack or stacked with suitcases on a trip to the airport, the Civic copes admirably thanks to its really rather good diesel engine. For a company that was late to market with a diesel engine, Honda have done pretty well with their oil-burners. I remember driving Honda’s first homegrown diesel – the 2.2-litre – in an Accord back in 2003. I was impressed at its refinement (from inside the cabin, at least) its smooth power delivery and it’s 50mpg economy. And much same is true of today’s unit.
Complementing its capacity as a load lugger, is the trick suspension. You can choose from dynamic, normal, or comfort. Personally, I leave it comfort as anything else makes it less comfortable. Okay, so this does seem to make the steering a little less direct, but that doesn’t bother me. And it means that we can travel four-up with a boot full of prams, suitcases and flatpack furniture and give most Citroen’s a run for their ‘magic carpet’ ride.
Half-term holidays? No problem. Bring on summer.
Automatic start-stop – is it really worth it?
Automatic stop-start systems are a popular feature on modern cars. But some systems are better than others, as Keith Moody finds out.
Date: 16 February 2015 | Current mileage: 5237 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 50.7mpg
Imagine the scene. You coast up to the queue of traffic, the lights change from red to green, and just as you’re about to move off, your car stalls. While the rest of the traffic moves away, you’re stranded – a sitting duck, holding up other drivers.
Welcome to the world of the Civic’s automatic stop-start system. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a fan of these systems. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why we have them. Shutting down the engine when the car is stationary reduces emission and stops you wasting fuel. But some stop-start systems are better than others.
Our Civic’s doesn’t cut in (or should that be cut out?) until the car has almost come to a complete standstill, when your speed is roughly one or two miles per hour. And it seems to take just a touch too long to kick back in.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of quite a bit of driver training, I was always taught to keep a car moving. Driving should be less stop, go, stop, go and more one fluid, continuous movement – anticipating stationary traffic, slowing the car down ahead of the obstacle but, most importantly, keeping it moving. After all, ‘a moving target is harder to hit’ as several instructors told me.
We've been having a few issues with the Civic's start/stop system.
This method of driving, however, is at total odds with the Civic system and often results in the scenario mentioned above. Just as the traffic begins to move, the Civic's engine cuts out, leaving you stopped in the middle of the road blocking traffic. And it catches other drivers out. Once or twice the car behind our long-term Tourer has expected to accelerate forward as the traffic ahead moves away, only to find me at a complete standstill.
Not all stop-start systems are like this. Some of them turn the engine off once the car gets below 5mph, which makes it much easier to anticipate when the traffic is about to move off so that you can dip the clutch, trigger the ignition and pull away without issue.
But over the past couple of months I’ve been trying to get the Civic up to its official mpg figure – so the Honda system has stayed on. Fortunately, very little of my driving involves heavy traffic, so it hasn’t been a huge problem. If I still had a heavy city commute to do, the system would be permanently off.
When the roads are busy, I’ve been able to adjust my driving style to accommodate the Civic. Not ideal, but with the Civic’s 70mpg nowhere to be found, I’ll be turning the system off from now on.
Time to say goodbye to our Honda Civic Tourer
After six months with our Honda Civic Tourer, Keith Moody says farewell to our hugely competent family load-lugger.
Date: 12 March 2015 | Current mileage: 6495 | Claimed economy: 73.4mpg | Actual economy: 52.1mpg
After six months and just under 8000 miles it’s time to say farewell to our long term Honda Civic Tourer. And you know what? I’ll miss it. Which isn’t something I say very often about modern cars.
From the moment I saw it arrive outside my house, I was quite taken with it. The way the car looks divides opinion, but personally I like it. Ever since Honda introduced the ‘Buck Rodgers’ styling, the Civic went up even further in my estimation. And, if anything, the Tourer looks more purposeful than the hatch. The sharp slashlines above the sills and over the rear wheelarch give it sense of menace that just isn’t there in the hatchback. I also like the way the roofline goes all the way to the D-pillar, meeting up with the glass from the rear hatch – much better than the chunky C-pillar.
And then there’s the 1.6-litre diesel engine, which has to be one of the best oil-burners I’ve driven. It’s refined, power delivery is smooth and there’s plenty of torque on tap no matter where you are in the rev range. Sure it might only have 120PS, but 300Nm of torque from 2000rpm is plenty to overtake slow traffic, without the need to change down.
Sadly, I couldn’t get anywhere near the superfrugal 74mpg advertised. The best I managed was on a long run from Cambridgeshire to London. Eco mode engage, cruise control set at 60mph, in free moving traffic I saw 65mpg. In real world driving conditions, it tended to return 50-52mpg. And just in case your wondering, a typical day looked like this. Drive three quarters of a mile to nursery, another half mile to school, 25 miles north on the motorway to the office at 70mph, repeat in reverse. Fairly typical, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Plenty of space for the children (and child seats) made the Civic a good family car
Worst Civic moment? Has to be regularly bashing my knee getting in the car. At six foot tall and with the car parked in tiny sparking spaces, I just couldn’t get the door open wide enough and ended up catching the outside of my knee on the hard and pointy plastic dash. That said, the mind-blowingly ill thought out infotainment system was a real pain. In the end, I ditched the in-car navigation and iPod connectivity, preferring instead my TomTom and the standard DAB radio. Some things do need to change, though, like the placement of the fuel filler release flap on the A-pillar, under the dash and above the bonnet release catch.
But there were plenty of good moments, too. The car’s capacity as a load-lugger never ceased to amaze. While I would always prefer a spare wheel, I’ll admit that the 117-litres of stowage space (enough for a medium-sized suitcase) was very welcome on family holidays. And the boot was able to take two more decent sized suitcases, plus a stroller and all the kids toys without two much of a fuss.
And the easy to fold ‘magic seats’ were excellent. At the touch of a button, the rear seats fold to create a completely flat load space. They’re assisted and well-damped, so you don’t need to be Superman to move them up and down. The clever storage compartment for the rear load bay blind was also a clever touch.
It’s no surprise, really. The Civic has always been a smart car. James May named it one of his 13 ‘Cars that Changed the World’ at the London Classic Car Show in January – and the DNA that gave us that car is still clear here.
But with prices starting at £20,270 on the road (£26,060 for the SR we had), it isn’t cheap. That’s £3k more than the entry-level Ford Focus Estate, while a Volkswagen Golf estate starts at £18.5k. The Civic Tourer might attract existing Honda Accord owners looking to downsize, but it’ll have a hard time catching the eye of cost-conscious new mums and dads looking for their first family estate. And that’s a shame – because this is one of the best family estate cars on forecourts today.
