Who doesn’t love a hot hatch? Take a small economy car with great utility, add some nice turbocharged power, sporty handling, and an aggressive baritone exhaust tone, and it’s almost guaranteed we enthusiasts will get a kick out of it. Do the specs match the price tag and bodywork? Our initial thought about the Honda Civic Type R pre-testing, and after driving such wildly-fun new hot hatches as the Hyundai Veloster N, was, is it really worth the premium over the Veloster N when they’re pretty close in power, weight, lap times, and even TCR racing podiums?
Does this latest 10th generation, 2020 Honda Civic Si 2-Door Coupe live up to the legendary Si badge? We think so.
Check out how it all goes down when two friends with Civic hatches that are a generation apart, with similar engine swaps, and similar suspension and tire mods, decide to have a friendly competition on track.
How does the 2019 Civic Type R drive just on the street, and not the racetrack? Follow along as Tedward gives us a glimpse of the big turbo hatch’s daily-able manners.
Wear headphones! The audio in this video was recorded with in-ear binaural microphones. With headphones or earbuds on, you’ll feel like you’re actually sitting in the driver’s seat.
We really dig this video by MotoIQ on fixing the under-appreciated EP3 Honda Civic Si’s suspension.
For many years now, Honda enthusiasts stateside have had to watch from the sidelines as European buyers hooned around the countryside in the hot-blooded Civic Type R while we had to make do with the Si model as the sportiest iteration available. That might be about to change.
Honda has just released the first visual offering of its 2014 World Touring Car Championship contender, the WTCC Civic. Despite only being a rendering a this point, the new five-door represents Honda’s newest configuration for the series in response to the new regulations coming in the 2014 WTCC season.
In Acura’s television ads, the ILX is billed as offering a just-right blend of premium-brand luxury, fun, and down-to-earth practicality—a blend that, in Acura’s own words, invites drivers to “move up (without) settling down.” Given this, one might assume the ILX Tech Hybrid would fit roughly the same mold, but with a distinctly energy-efficient “green” twist, and to a certain extent it does just that.
If you are looking at your screen and thinking “that’s not a 2013, it’s a 2012,” you’re not alone. The styling changes are subtle at best. Revised front and rear fascias, along with new head and taillights and a sharper character line are the primary changes. We haven’t seen any interior images yes.
Mostly we think that it’s important to understand whom Acura is marketing its new ILX to, in order to understand why it has built the car that we drove in Arizona. That’s because, in addition to being definitively not some kind of next-phase TSX, Acura is clear about the fact that the ILX is also, most certainly, not a reemergence of the lost Integra nameplate.
Completely put to shame by other cars in this class. Light, lifeless steering, slow, and overly soft in the bends. Do yourself a favor and buy a Ford Focus.
We recently drove the new Honda Civic lineup, and came away with a basic sense of what the car was like and how it had evolved. That trip, however, covered the whole Civic range, and with a limited amount of time, we had to focus mostly on a couple specific models, while giving the Hybrid only a cursory appraisal. Luckily, we managed to get the 2012 Civic Hybrid in at our Michigan office for some extended time in the vehicle.
Remember the first car you ever owned? Perhaps it was a hand-me-down from another family member, or maybe you stockpiled some cash from the summer job at the local fast food joint to buy a rusty fixer-upper? Regardless of how it came to your possession, it was your first car, and if you’re a fan of this magazine then odds are you probably did something to it that—at least in your mind— made it better. Perhaps you went for a set of wheels or a loud stereo, or if you had delusions of mechanical ability as young car owners often do, you probably hacked up the exhaust in the name of less backpressure. And then there’s the favorite pastime of fabricating a cold air induction system from dryer ducting and zip ties procured from the local hardware store. You did that? Yeah, us too.
And thusly is the 2012 Civic born; with an unspoken mandate from the public to be better in every way than the outgoing car, and the fear of screwing up a good thing foremost in the minds of the Honda brain trust. No one wants to kill the cash cow, when the prospect for future milk money is so very bright. That conservative mindset helps to explain why this new car looks so much like the old one, too. But don’t be fooled by the evolutionary appearance, Honda has revised the gen-nine Civic in almost every tangible way.
Honda has unveiled the production versions of the new Civic lineup, and it offers more economy, more power, and more options.
These new Honda Civics, in sedan and Si coupe flavors, may be called “concepts” by the company brass, but they still look awfully close to production spec to us. Have a closer look for yourself, at our gallery of images, live from the show floor here in Detroit.
The 2011 Detroit auto show has been fairly light on spectacular, jaw dropping, but utterly pretty fluffy concept cars. Automakers seem to be taking a more stoic and practical approach this year, showing off vehicles that accurately reflect the direction of the company.
I was lucky enough to have the Civic Si waiting for me at the airport when I had just returned home from driving Honda’s new CR-Z in California. Lucky for two reasons: the Si is a damned fun car to drive, at any point, and because it gave me a good chance to do a sort of A/B comparison between two of Honda’s most sport-oriented vehicles.
These spy photos of the 2012 Honda Civic just landed on our desk.