Price £20,095
MPG 67.3
Top speed 136mph
Can you name any of your great-grandparents? Out of a possible eight I'll bet you're struggling to name even half of them. And that's only going back three generations. It's different for cars, though. This is the ninth generation Civic and the bestselling family car can name all its relatives. Honda has a working name for each iteration. Starting with the original Civic, there was the Super, Wonder, Grand, Sports, Miracle, Conscious and finally Revolution. Wonder (number 3) is my favourite: its tagline was "Man maximum, machine minimum!" Today's super-competent cars are so alive with technology it sometimes feels as if we, their drivers, have been left out of the equation.
Up until Conscious (number 7), the Civics were a byword for nice, conservative, anonymous motoring. The Civic was the Captain Sensible of the road, but then along came Revolution (number 8). A riot of bulging eyes and acute angles. It was so futuristic it looked like part of the Mir space station had fallen to earth – it even had triangular exhaust pipes. The reliable dullness that had served Honda so well for 34 years was abruptly parked in a bay marked "heritage motoring": the new Civic Revolution was ready for a bright new beginning.
Problem was… there were a few problems. Owners told Honda that the design was too polarising, that they couldn't see anything out the back, that the ride was too hard, that the interior felt a bit cheap. Oh dear.
In a masterclass of diplomacy, Honda has both listened to those carping owners and stuck to its guns. Number 9, the new model – as yet unnamed, but I'd have thought the Civic Pride could be a goer – is still a visually challenging vehicle. In a market where anodyne rules the middle lane, the Pride stands out like Boris Johnson at a Kojak convention. But some of its more futuristic corners have been rubbed off, literally. The square-cut rear end is now curved, the triangular exhaust pipes circular. And the front looks more sporty, less aggressive.
You can now see out the back, and they've even thrown in a window wiper, though nobody had complained about that. The new suspension means it feels supple without any loss of that racy road feel. The softer ride comes from fluid-filled compliance bushings. You know they are fluid-filled, as you hear the liquid sloshing about as if you are in an idling speed boat or have drunk too much tea.
They've upped the use of more forgiving materials inside and improved sound insulation, though, mercifully, the space-age dashboard is unchanged. It sweeps around you in two hi-tech levels, its curve continuing from the central console right round to the door. The car also has what's billed as a "magic seat" – don't get too excited, it's just a rear bench which folds up in numerous ingenious ways to increase the space of the already surprisingly deep boot.
Enginewise, the Pride has the cleanest and most powerful units of the entire family – choose between two high-revving petrol units or a silky smooth 2.2-litre diesel. A new 1.6-litre i-DTEC is also planned for later this year which will deliver CO2 emissions of just 95g/km.
As for great-grandparents, I could manage only two: Hugh and Lilias.
Fuel figures: the whole story
One of the first disappointments that the owner of a new car faces is that real-world fuel consumption figures rarely matches – and never exceeds – the figure published by the manufacturer. To tackle this problem, What Car? has launched True MPG, a website that gives real-world miles per gallon information for the first time.
Until now, the only information that's been available is the car makers' own figures, which are determined under EU law and are conducted in laboratory conditions on rolling roads. Not any more. Car buyers can simply log on to whatcar.com/truempg and work out the fuel economy they can expect to get from their next new car using our exclusive True MPG tools.
What Car? tests the vehicles using a portable emissions-measurement system when the engines have reached normal operating temperature. The vehicles are then driven by two experienced engineers over a variety of roads including motorways, A and B roads, and through towns and villages. The data from the testing considers driving style, changes in altitude, ambient temperature and humidity and engine temperature which is then used to produce the more realistic data. Here's a video showing how the testing was carried out: http://www.whatcar.com/truempg/how-we-did-it
