Hondas have somehow always been our perennial favourites, whether it was the old City (silver coloured) in which we logged over 50,000km and took to the furthermost corners of the country, from the Himalayas in the north to Chennai in the south-east or whether it was the vtec City which we waxed eloquent about and had dreams of modding to get phenomenal power and blasting down the expressway. The Accord gave us and our in-car refrigerator refuge during our air-con comparison test in the middle of the Rajasthan desert, while the CR-V we took on another cross-country drive for the Auto Expo in New Delhi. More recently we have had the new City Vtec in our fleet which Vikrant enjoyed and described as one of the most comfortable cars, to own and drive and be in. With its cavernous boot, ergonomic controls, comfortable seats and very fuel efficient engine it continued the old City tradition of being the best in its class, though a tad expensive.
The Civic though was going to the most revolutionary car ever to grace the Honda stable in the country with its futuristic and yet utilitarian interiors, eye-catching design and styling as well as a much more affordable price tag compared to the Accord.
We were suitably impressed by the car during our road test and then it served us well during our Golden Quadrilateral drive, with competitive fuel consumption (though not best in its class), an exciting and comfortable cockpit experience and a high feel good factor. In fact all through our long drive through the then flood ravaged country it was the most sought after car. Even the incident where its ground clearance caused us some problems in the rain-ravaged Orissa district of Balasore was not enough to dampen anyone’s interest in the car. Validation of the editorial team’s desire for the Civic came from Karun Chandhok, who rated the vehicle to be far superior in its track etiquette than the competition.
So of course, it wasn’t without reason that we were all excited by the prospective new long-termer. Vikrant picked it up from the Honda Mumbai regional office and after our brand meet at our plant refused to part with the keys on the drive back to Mumbai. As I was planning to drive it down to the beaches around the corner to the south of Goa, I resisted the temptation to pull rank and let him have his couple of hours of fun for the night and got a fully tanked up car the next morning.
With four people on board and a bit of baggage I set off for Goa, intending to take the much talked about Hubli-Ankola highway to cross the western ghats and then drive up north past Karwar and get to my favourite beach destination in Cancona. This turned out to be a much longer than the normal sub-500km drive and when I tanked up on the way back at Madgaon, the odo read a full 700km. With 59.25 litres (including the 19.29 litres, a thousand bucks worth of gas that I filled between Hubli and Ankola), it returned the best mileage that we have managed till date on a tankful of fuel or more, an impressive 11.68kmpl! The second best mileage we got on the drive back from Madgaon to Pune, of 11.42kmpl on the nearly 480km journey. So we managed the Goa to Pune journey quite comfortably on a single tankful.
It is on long drives like these that the great utility of the myriad cubby holes and storage spaces really comes is truly appreciated – the CD albums get swallowed up, the cell phones disappeared into one covered cubby hole, another serves for storage of money for toll bills and bank notes, while yet another swallows up all the coins. After having driven the Octavia RS for nearly a year and on many long journeys, this is a very welcome change.
However, the ride and handling characteristics of the car change significantly with four adults and a bit of luggage on board, much like the first gen City. If one encounters bad roads with such a load, it makes for quite a harrowing ride.
That apart, the Civic is as impressive as we imagined it would be. The sporty exhaust note and the smooth revving engine add to the ownership experience as do the double instrument clusters and the novel steering wheel. Electrically folding rear-view mirrors are such a boon, specially when parking in the office basement parking lot. The car has a pretty short nose and tail, a fact that is a pleasure to discover after one gets out and checks that there is still oodles of space between the end of the car and the wall in your parking lot.
It is no surprise that the Civic clocked 2750km within the first month of its arrival as even Sirish used it for the few days I was away to Geneva. An overall fuel efficiency figure of nearly ten and a half kilometres per litre means that there is not too much difference between the best and the worst. Even on a trip to Mumbai when the car is driven flat out to be able to make it in time for a meeting, a 9.64kmpl fuel efficiency figure is quite respectable.
If you wonder why I spend so much time on the fuel efficiency figures of a Rs 10 lakh car which has hundreds of other things I would love to talk about, it’s just that in the last month itself I have been asked the fuel efficiency of the car on numerous occasions by other prospective owners of the car. So watch out next month for more insightful non-fuel efficiency related info on our Civic.
