Eye-Hatching!
Radical styling aside, Civic five-door is both useful and fun
Did you know that, here in Canada, the three best-selling vehicles are all pickup trucks? The Ford F-150, the General Motors combination of the Silverado and Sierra, then the Ram 1500.
The fourth top-selling vehicle? At the end of this year, the Honda Civic will have held the crown for the best-selling car in Canada for 19 years running. Quite a feat; it really shows how Canadians value both practicality and utility.
If your driveway is a little small for the behemoth trucks and SUVs, but you still value utility and practicality, a hatchback would be your logical choice. That utility part, however, has been missing from the Civic lineup since 2005 — until now.
The Civic Hatchback is back for 2017, echoing the new look of the recently released sedan and coupe.
It certainly brings the utility. With the rear seats up, the cargo area is a class-leading 728 litres; with the seats down, the 1,308 L is not quite as cavernous as the VW Golf or Kia Soul, but it’s still big enough to fit large cargo such as flat-pack Ikea wardrobe boxes. Unfortunately, the seats don’t fold perfectly flat.
Oddly, despite it being more versatile and with more cargo space than the sedan, the hatch is shorter by 135 millimetres. It also echoes the styling of the sedan, though depending on your point of view, that can be good or bad. The new look is certainly distinctive. I’m not a fan of the incongruous lines and huge, faux air inlets at the front, but others seem to like it, so it’s a matter of opinion.
Starting at $21,390, the Civic Hatchback is considerably more expensive than the sedan or coupe — it goes all the way to $30,690! But the Hatchback is considered by Honda to be more of a premium vehicle, and has considerably more standard features than the sedan, including cruise control, a 180-watt sound system with a seven-inch display and a remote entry system, to name but a few.
There are very few features left out, save for navigation, but for a couple of grand more over the base model, you can also get Honda Sensing. This is a suite of safety systems that includes adaptive cruise control, blind-spot warning, forward-collision warning and forward-collision braking. In my opinion, it is worth the upgrade, though it’s only available with the continuously variable transmission (CVT).
The hatchback has a much better engine than the sedan: a 1.5-L turbocharged four that produces 174 horsepower and 167 pound-feet of torque. It’s beyond just peppy; it’s a satisfyingly powerful engine that will not leave you in a pinch for passing.
Driving the Civic Hatchback is a delightful experience. The sixspeed manual has relatively short throws and snaps into place easily, with a light clutch and predictable take-up. And with Agile Handling Assist — Honda’s fancy name for brake torque vectoring — as a standard feature, the Hatchback can be tossed into corners with little understeer or roll. When you want to back the gas pedal off a bit, the car is firm but comfortable. It feels like a bigger car when cruising and a smaller car when pushing it.
The steering wheel is thick and has a soft covering, and quality materials abound inside the cabin. The seats are roomy and comfortable, and there’s plenty of room for rear passengers. The driver’s gauges are all digital, with various modes to cycle through fuel economy, trip odometers and other useful information.
In the back, there’s a clever rollaway cargo cover that comes from the side, instead of the usual retractable cover bar that needs to be removed if the seats are down. The centre console also offers two-tier storage, so you can put your phones down and behind the dash and snake your cords up through an opening to the USB connectors. Inside the cabin you can see why this car commands a premium price over the sedan.
Spending a week with the hatchback brought up a few quibbles. The stereo doesn’t have a volume knob, but instead uses the touch screen to bump it up or down, which requires you to take your eyes off the road and tap it several times; it got more annoying with every drive, though the saving grace is a volume button on the steering wheel.
And while the seats are soft and supportive, and there’s a good amount of room for everyone, the centre console intrudes on the driver’s right knee, and a long drive can get a little uncomfortable.
If you can get over those issues — and you like the new look — the Honda Civic Hatchback is one of the better offerings out there for compact hatches. It’s fun to drive, offers plenty of versatile utility for your people and cargo, and boasts features normally found in more expensive cars.