Buy Civic

A sign that India’s finally found its place on the global automotive map is the number of new car launches that we see every other day. More importantly, manufacturers are now launching new models in India at roughly the same time as their global launches. A case in point is the revolutionary new Honda Civic.

We’d like to thank Honda for giving us the new Civic in India without much delay at all. This is a car that has been hailed as technological tour-de-force – a design, especially in the case of its two-tiered instrument panel, that could lead to a paradigm shift.

Speaking of paradigm shifts, the Honda Civic was launched in India in two avatars, the conceivably long in the tooth, 5-speed manual transmission and the new F1 inspired 5-speed paddle shift automatic – which, especially in its segment, is something that we haven’t seen before.

We all want to buy civic due to its capabilities. The Honda Civic is clearly a very capable machine. The driving experience immediately reflects its state of the art technology and years of R&D – right from its stiff chassis that changes direction without hesitation to its surprisingly comfortable ride. So we buy civic.

With that said, one of the inherent downsides of Honda’s fantastic VTEC technology is that it creates maximum power high in the rev range. So we buy civic. The upside of course is that this encourages the driver to explore the upper limits of that rev range on a regular basis, which in itself is quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, extended driving at 6500 RPM is not something that would endear fellow road users – or even environmentalists for that matter, as any engine, even one as efficient as the Civics’, has an unquenchable thirst for liquefied fossil fuel at high RPM.

Unfortunately, the 132bhp created by the Civics’ 1.8 litre engine just isn’t enough – it especially lacks low-end torque. Whereas the manual transmission is able to work around this problem by offering short and direct shifts that make it a pleasure to use, the automatic transmission, even in S or paddle shift mode, highlights this lack of torque and can feel underpowered – this is despite the fact that smooth up-shifts can be made without lifting your foot off the accelerator pedal. Hence we buy civic.