2018 Honda Civic vs 2017

What's the difference?

A comfortable and convenient daily driver that ticks all the safety and tech boxes, the VTi-LX is a compelling offering given it is better value than the RS, and not overpriced for its spec level. 

What it lacks in an interesting powertrain it more than makes up for with its huge cabin space and well sorted ride. Whether you choose it or not could very well come down to the looks…

It’s taken a while to get here, and its wild looks may put some people off, but make no mistake, the Type R fits in perfectly with the current crop of high-performance hot hatches you can buy now, and those that are coming our way.

It’s not perfect, but what is most striking after our first try is just how well Honda has balanced performance against real-world requirements. It’s a real Type R, all right.

The look of the 10th-generation Civic is best described as polarising. There's a slew of hard angular edges pointing in all directions, which makes an overall design theme hard to pinpoint. The elegant curvature of the Mazda3, or the more conservative lines of the Hyundai Elantra and Subaru Impreza perhaps appeal to a wider audience.

As I mentioned earlier, the almost-as-well-equipped RS spec comes with some touches that could make all the difference here. The blacked-out bars across the RS’s front, side and rear compliment those angles a lot better, and the rear looks far more resolved with a spoiler (what are those rear light clusters pointing to?).

In comparison, the LX looks incredibly plain and, aside from those LED lights, it is honestly difficult to tell it apart from the VTi-L or even the base-model VTi. While subtlety might appeal to some, it’s an odd card to play for a flagship variant given the overall design of the Civic screams ‘look at me’.

The ‘Modern Steel’ grey colour of our test car rammed the plain-Jane look home. If it were my choice I’d go for the ‘Brilliant Sporty Blue’ as it suits the car’s angular aesthetic a little better. The only free colour is ‘Rally Red’.

The 17-inch alloys were also a topic of controversy in the office. Over my drive week I came to appreciate the milled-alloy with gloss-black highlight designs. Matt Campbell disagrees. I will concede they look smaller than 17-inches, likely due to the black highlights.

Inside is a better story. The angular design trend continues, but it’s all very ergonomic. None of the materials appear cheap or nasty, and there are more than a few soft finishes in the right places. It doesn’t have the symmetry of the Elantra’s interior, but I became very used to how comfortable it was.

Of particular note is the chunky, leather-bound steering wheel, and I have to give props to the low, sporty seating position.

Housed in the dash is a digital display which well laid-out, presents all the important information to the driver well, has a high frame-rate and seemed to never be subject to glare. It’s no premium bells & whistles experience like Audi’s Virtual Cockpit but is a nice addition nonetheless.

‘Interesting’ is the word to describe the absolutely overt nature of the Civic Type R exterior. It looks like Speed Racer’s Mach 5 that’s been attacked by a group of 10-year-old car fiends with access to fibreglass moulds, such is the intensity of the bumps, lumps, swoops and curves that festoon this wild machine.

It’s 78mm wider than a stock Civic and 38mm wider, too, which comes across when the Type R hits the road.

While the front end is reasonably low key, things get loose and wild around the sides and back, with a World Time Attack-esque rear wing, exaggerated side skirts and overfenders and not two, but three exhaust outlets. The centre pipe, by the way, is there to increase noise levels.

This reviewer reckons it looks pretty awesome, offering a genuine road presence that puts even the overt Focus RS in the shade. Others, though, aren’t as sold, suggesting the car’s mature performance is spoiled by the street-racer vibe.

Inside is a similar story, with a red-themed trim spreading across the dash and steering wheel, and onto the deeply sculpted sports seats –custom-made Honda units that save 5kg each over the Recaros in the previous Type R – and even around the air vents.

Does the Civic sedan look a little… big to you? That’s because it is. It’s massive inside. But somehow, it shares a wheelbase with the hatch.

It’s kind of magic, but that’s one of Honda’s fortes. Big practical interiors with some hidden surprises.

What surprised me the most though, is the ridiculous rear legroom. I had leagues of space behind my own driving position. How can this be if it has the same wheelbase as the hatch? 

Well, some investigation revealed that despite its near-identical looks, the sedan's cabin is physically different from the hatch, and an additional 34 millimetres of legroom is granted in the back. It doesn’t sound like much but makes a world of difference.

It legitimately has far more legroom than even some ‘large' sedans I’ve driven and ridden in, and the centre seat could fit an adult-sized human in decent comfort for a long-distance drive. Impressive.

The boot is also close to largest in the class. With the seats up, there’s 517 litres (VDA) of space on offer, which compares very well with the Mazda3 (408L), Elantra (458L) and Impreza (460L) but is just barely eclipsed by the new Kia Cerato (520L).

In the cockpit too, there’s plenty of stowage space under the centre console including two large movable cupholders (although without those little variable edges, so a tilt-risk for small stuff) plus some smallish cubbies in the doors for front and rear passengers. These won’t hold larger belongings or bottles, but they’re sufficient for smaller objects like wallets, books or keys.

Everything is also very easy to reach, but the sunroof eats a little headroom which could be a challenge for those over 182cm tall. I also had to question the choice of not including a dial for volume control. There are wheel-mounted buttons and a touch interface on the screen itself. But that’s kind of clunky when you need volume down in a hurry.

The driver’s seat is the focus of the Civic, and from there it’s fantastic. The chunky steering wheel is dimpled to cup fingers and thumb, the narrow-gated shifter falls easily to hand and the deep buckets are both supportive and comfortable… although they could be mounted even lower in the car.

The rear offers a surprising amount of head room, given the shape of the car, but it needs the cooperation of the front-seat passengers to give back seaters enough knee and foot room. There are ISOFIX points for two seats, as well.

Two cup holders are part of an oddly shaped lidless bin between the front seats, and bottles will fit in all four doors. Rear seaters miss out on cupholders and USB points, although there is one in the centre bin that can be used if needed.

At 414 litres, the boot area is the same as the civilian Civic's, and 764 litres with the seats down, even despite the extra exhaust and suspension gubbins under the floor. The reason? No room for even a space-saver spare, and a can of sealant is your only get-out-of-jail card.

The biggest letdown in a practicality sense is the multimedia system – it’s well off the pace when compared to other products in the segment. It’s not intuitive, the buttons are too small, there are far too many menus and its performance during our test was suboptimal at best.

Coming in at $50,990, the Civic Type R – code-named FK8 - drops into a ferocious premium hot hatch stoush that includes the likes of the price-matching Ford Focus RS and the $1000 dearer Volkswagen Golf R Grid. Also entering the fray are the Peugeot 308 GTI and the incoming Renault Megane RS, not to mention the top-spec Hyundai i30 N.

The four-door Type R wants for little in the way of standard kit, offering up a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine, six-speed manual gearbox, helical limited slip diff, Brembo front brakes, 20-inch rims and adaptive dampers supplied as standard.

Inside, the Civic is also well stacked, with Honda-built racing bucket seats, a digital dash that offers a shift-light function as well as a throttle-position indicator and other performance parameters, auto lights and wipers, and a machined alloy shift knob that’s a big nod towards the fifth-generation Type R.

A rev-matching function (thankfully switch-offable for purists) helps with downshifting, while a three-stage drive mode selector can give you a car that’s calm or more crazed at the flick of a switch.

It misses out on sat nav, but it does incorporate Apple CarPlay and Android Auto into its seven-inch touchscreen multimedia infotainment system.

There’s also a comprehensive set of driver aids packaged under the Honda Sensing badge, giving the Type R features like AEB, adaptive cruise control and lane-departure warning, while LED lighting appears front and back.

So stacked, in fact, is the Type R that Honda only offers metallic or pearl paint as an option, at $575. Red is free, but grey, blue, black or the famed Championship White come at a cost.

Up this end of the Civic hierarchy, there’s just the one drivetrain. A 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine, producing 127kW/220Nm, mated only to a CVT auto. The Civic is front-drive only and, much to the dismay of old-school Civic fans, there's no manual option in sight.

That engine puts it middle of the pack compared to small sedan competitors. The enthusiast’s choice may be either the Mazda3 SP25 with a naturally aspirated 2.5-litre (138kW/250Nm) or the Hyundai Elantra SR Turbo which has an impressive 1.6-litre turbo (150kW/265Nm). Both of those can be had with a six-speed auto or DCT respectively (or, better yet, a six-speed manual option on either).

But the Civic still outshines the Cerato’s ordinary-all-round 112kW/192Nm 2.0-litre offering (which is also a bit thirsty) and Subaru’s infamously underpowered 115kW/196Nm non-turbo 2.0-litre engine which is also asked to pull a much heavier AWD layout.

Honda’s K20C1 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine was revealed to the world in 2013, before hitting the road in 2015 under the bonnet of the fourth-generation Civic Type R (we didn’t get that one in Australia).

The company is best known for its nat-atmo shriekers, but it’s hard to argue with a 400Nm torque curve that kicks in between 2500 and 4500rpm.

Its 228kW output is actually slightly down on overseas numbers, thanks to a retune for 95 RON fuel. Honda says its 5.7-second 0-100km/h time is the same, despite the power drop.

Only one gearbox is offered – an uprated version of the regular Civic’s six-speed manual, with marginally taller third, fourth and fifth gears, a lightened flywheel on one end and a helical LSD at the other. Clutch feel is excellent, and the shift action is tight and crisp.

Honda’s smaller engine choice and CVT is designed to be frugal. On the combined cycle, Honda claims the VTi-LX will drink 6.0-litres to 100km. There’s not too much variation in the field with Mazda also claiming 6.0 for the SP25 Astina, and at the other end of the scale, there’s Kia’s Cerato which is touted to drink 7.4L/100km.

After a week of driving over a tank of petrol I scored 7.7L/100km which is closer to (but surprisingly less than) Honda’s urban estimate of 8.0L/100km.

Despite being turbo'd the VTi-LX will happily drink bargain-basement 91 unleaded, and the tank holds 47 litres.

Honda rates the Civic Type R’s combined fuel economy rating at 8.8 litres per 100km. After a 240km dash across Tasmania, we recorded a dash-indicated figure of a surprisingly low 9.6 L/100km.

It has a 47-litre fuel tank, it’s been tuned to accept 95 octane fuel. Oh, and it won’t gain back that missing power by using 98 octane, sadly.

The Civic presents a strange dichotomy between the luxury spec and its sporty frame. As mentioned earlier, you sit nice and low in the Civic, and you have this chunky, well weighted steering wheel, giving you the illusion of sportiness at the helm.

It lives up to that by feeling nicely planted in the corners. This is largely due to all Civics having a more sophisticated independent rear suspension. Thankfully, it’s not a stiff tune either. It’s well sorted over bumpy stuff, there’s not a rattle to be heard in the cabin, and you don’t have to cringe every time you spot an incoming car park speed bump or unfortunately-positioned pothole.

The engine won’t exactly have you setting lap-times, however, and it’s a tad noisy in the cabin when it comes to really getting the power down somewhere past 2500rpm. 

Then, there’s the CVT. It truly isn’t the worst CVT I’ve ever driven (I’m looking at you, 1998 Nissan Micra…) and in terms of actual driving the experience isn’t dulled much. You should know it creates a slightly unpleasant rubbery characteristic, where your inputs feel delayed because it takes time for the CVT to react to changes through the driveline. 

For example, when laying off heavy acceleration, it will keep accelerating for half a second after you’ve taken your foot off. It’s a minor issue, but a noticeable one.

It also produces an annoying high-pitched whining sound at low speed and when you come to a full stop. You won’t be bothered by this if you drive around with the (actually great) 10-speaker stereo on most of the time, but you shouldn’t have to rely on it.

In terms of your ability to alter the engine’s characteristics, there’s an ‘Eco’ button which seems to make the CVT fight you as you try to extract revs out of it, and a sport mode on the transmission which seemed to make the accelerator a little more responsive and forced the CVT to act a bit more like a traditional auto.

Paddle-shift appears on the VTi-LX and RS grades but while the ‘gear changes’ they trigger didn’t have a long delay on them, they proved unsatisfying anyway.

At a shade under 1400kg (about 70kg heavier than a regular Civic RS), the fifth-gen Type R is about 350kg heavier than the 1997 Civic Type R… but it’s a handy 100kW more powerful at 228kW, not to mention 250Nm to the good at 400Nm.

It’s not a porker by hot-hatch standards, though, and that torque piles in hot and strong right around 3000rpm. It makes for a very different driving experience than previous Type Rs, which relied on screamingly high revs to make power.

The Civic’s platform was always designed around the eventual arrival of a Type R, and a multilink rear end makes a welcome return to the Type R. Combined with a long wheelbase for a hatch, as well as specially designed front suspension that limits torque steer and tramlining, the Civic Type R is a faithful and willing companion, rather than an outright lunatic.

The sheer amount of physical grip from huge 245mm wide tyres makes for eye-opening corner-entry speeds, and the rear end simply hunkers down and plays along.

The car has three drive modes – Comfort, Sport and R+ - which adjust all sorts of parameters including throttle sensitivity, steering weight and the stiffness of the dampers.

To be honest, we didn’t notice a great deal of difference between the top two modes, but the Comfort setting gave the Type R a genuinely civil edge, spoiled only by excessive tyre and wind roar at even moderate speeds.

A blast around Baskerville circuit in Tasmania revealed more of the Type R’s cooperative, neutral nature.

It would have been nice to see an Individual mode, giving the driver the option, for example, to wind the dampers down to Comfort for more grip in rougher conditions, but keep the powertrain in Sport.

A blast around Baskerville circuit in Tasmania revealed more of the Type R’s cooperative, neutral nature and the depths of that amazing front-end grip.

Big four-piston Brembo brakes on 350mm hatted front rotors stood up to the assault reasonably well, but if it was our car, we’d upgrade the pads and brake fluid to more hardy items if we were taking it to the track regularly.

The engine can be caught off boost under 3500rpm at times, so in that respect it’s still like the old Type Rs; give ’em revs and they’ll love you forever.

It could also stand to be a bit more overt with its exhaust noise. A bi-modal system, for example, that emits pops, crackles and bangs on throttle overrun would suit it perfectly.

In all, the Type R is an absolute barrel of monkeys to punt at speed, and it doesn’t punish you when you go to drive home again.

The Honda Sensing kit adds a full suite of driver aids like AEB and adaptive cruise control, helping the Civic score a maximum five-star rating from ANCAP.

Honda offers a five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty across its range. This is great but should be the minimum.

It compares well in this segment to fellow Japanese competitors, the Mazda3 and Subaru Impreza, which fall behind with outdated three year/unlimited kilometre warranties. 

Hyundai is bang-on par with a similar five year/unlimited kilometre warranty, but the bar to beat, as ever, is Kia with its seven-year/unlimited kilometre promise on the Cerato.

Honda offers the Type R with a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty, and suggests service intervals of 10,000km or 12 months.

Its fixed-price servicing regime locks in the cost of the first 10 services at $307 each, which is a real bargain given the car’s performance.