The 2011 Honda Civic Sedan: An Old Favourite, or Just Old?

Few cars are more ubiquitous than this: the Honda Civic. Still a relatively fresh face around Canadian roads, the latest Civic’s Pug-faced countenance is far less dramatic than it was when it debuted just a few years ago, and is obviously well-accepted by many Canadians as the car is, just as it always has been, a perennial best seller.

Revisiting the drawing board in 2009, minor changes to some of the fascias and trim pieces have kept the product feeling fresh enough, while the retained sweeping roofline and a sleek windshield angle still convey an advanced, one-motion profile with a low and wide stance that is unique in the market. As a four door, the car’s abbreviated trunklid and squared off rear end; a Civic tradition, ensures a decent amount of rear storage space without increasing the car’s overall length dramatically.

The interior focuses on sophisticated styling with a two-tier instrument panel that has been the subject of much debate; with the lower portion relaying the engine information like revolutions and idiot lights, while the upper LED display blasts your retinas with possibly the largest digital speedometer ever. Although many have called it vulgar and akward, the huge, easy-to-read numbers placed right below the line of sight are the next best thing to a proper heads-up-display. Comfortable seating and possessing of more than a few accommodating storage areas with room for mobile phones, MP3 players and more, the interior is quite well thought out, but does have a few bugaboos that really should have been remedied by now; most of which have to do with texture and material. First off, there’s the familiar soft plastic that’s been used extensively to build Honda interiors. Found on everything from the door panels to the centre console, it seems to be favoured for often-handled surfaces thanks to its pebbly texture, but is woefully easy to scratch. Simply moving your ring finger over portions of the door panel or dropping your keys into the centre console is enough to put some relatively unsightly scratches in the surface in a matter of days, and many a Honda test car has borne out these abuses after just a few thousand journalist-driven (read: hard) kilometers. Second, there is the issue of upholstery. Although well structured and quite comfortable, the seat material is something resembling a sticker version of velour, and as such, it grabs absolutely every wayward fleck of hair, dirt, fleece, or fabric is can and holds on to it with amazing alacrity. Trimmed almost exclusively in black, it took nearly daily lint-brushing to keep the seats looking clean, and anyone with a pet of any kind will quickly find their seats reupholsterd in tabby or terrier. But, if you can get over that (or better yet, select one of the alternate and quite easy-to-care for fabrics), the interior is quite nice. The starship-styled dashboard gives the car a certain futuristic quality that’s at odds with the car’s runabout status, and that’s a good thing made even better by its practicality. All the controls are quite easy to use, and although simplistic in its implementation and minimalistic in its one-line display, the USB/iPod integration is quite good. It’s also worth noting that those of us disinclined to leave our electronic devices exposed in a bin can sleep easy at night as the USB interface resides within the centre console, allowing you to leave your iPod in the car without leaving it in sight of any would-be felons.

Built on a high-rigidity unit-body platform, the Civic is designed to deliver precise, sharp and fun-to-drive handling performance with its fully independent suspension, and it quite simply does. The front end is blessed with a perfectly balanced steering setup that pairs a quick and nimble steering rack with a steering pump system that both weights up nicely at speed, while still allowing for single-finger parking lot maneuvers. Out back, the multi-link suspension that made some previous Civics such joys to drive is woefully M.I.A., but the torsion beam that replaces it is still quite good. Driven with some aggression, the car sticks to the road like glue and track well over undulations and bumps, but handles itself quite well in good conditions. However, being faced with navigating long stretches of farmland-surrounded highway during high winds changes things a mite, and I must say, inclement weather is not a Civic’s best friend. Tossed around like a little wedge-shaped rag doll, it took considerable effort to maintain something resembling a straight and true path as the winds buffeted the car left and right. Try as I might, the car wandered over the road like a spurned drunken prom date, struggling to maintain any semblance of composure. Forced to make the same commute again in another vehicle later in the day under even worse conditions, I found the buffeting to be nearly unnoticeable, leading me to believe that either the Civic’s suspension or tires were to blame for its incorrigible behavior. However, for the remainder of week’s cold, but otherwise bland weather, the car’s road manners were the picture of docility.

But for all its futuristic good looks, comfortable charm, and nearly impeccable road manners, there are a few trouble spots with the latest Honda Civic, and they all come from other manufacturers. Now entering its sixth year largely unchanged, the car is quite simply getting a little long in the tooth. With plenty of fresh competition from Chevrolet in the form of their much-publicized Cruze, Ford’s new-to-us Focus, Hyundai’s wildly successful Elantra, and Suzuki’s excellent but largely-unknown SX4, the Civic seems to have fallen prey to the same problem that the Toyota Corolla appears to be afflicted with: overconfidence. Hyundai’s Elantra seems to offer an equally unique but even more futuristic style paired with excellent value, while Ford’s Focus and Chevrolet’s Cruze benefit from extensive modern testing and design techniques practiced in Europe’s unforgiving market to promise better performance. And although slowly churning out new fans every day, Suzuki’s tiny SX4 will always remain a greta choice for Canadians by virtue of its all-wheel drive system and quite possibly best-in-class build quality. Granted, the Civic badge is still a reputable nameplate that is, barring some sort of massive image-tarnishing near-apocalyptic catastrophe, guaranteed to sell well, but unless Honda puts a little of their massive engineering muscle behind giving car buyers a new, rethought rendition of one of their best loved products, they might awake one day to find their once-loyal customer base has jumped ship. Not today, and not tomorrow, but one day.