Honda shows off reborn Civic
Eager to restore luster and add youthful pizazz to its bestselling sedan, Honda on Wednesday night took up residency in YouTube Studios in West Los Angeles to unveil the 2016 Civic.
Scheduled to hit showrooms in the coming weeks, the 10th-generation of the four-seater is sportier and sleeker than its predecessor. It is also the first U.S. Honda to feature a turbocharged engine.
The Civic is California’s bestselling car and among the top sellers nationally, but it faces stiff competition from a slew of new compact crossovers and a new, sportier Toyota Prius hybrid — which was the state’s No. 1 seller in 2012 and 2013.
The new Civic will arrive as a sedan, but the lineup will eventually include a coupe and five-door hatchback, and will be available in the racier Si and Type-R models.
It will include the Apple CarPlay information and entertainment system, and a suite of driver-assist technologies, among them semiautomated braking, lane departure protection, and adaptive cruise control — a first for Honda.
Although Honda is billing the new Civic as a “global” car, it has California DNA. The exterior was designed at Honda’s U.S. sales headquarters in Torrance.
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The new vehicle sits 2 inches wider and 1 inch lower than the 2015 model. Stylistically, it sports a swoopier, fastback tail and a longer, more aggressive hood.
That will suit critics who complained that the current version relied too much on being economical — and having low-cost looks to match. Introduced as a 2012 model, the car was critically panned as boring and cheap.
TrueCar analyst Eric Lyman called it a misstep for a car that historically hit the mark.
“Honda made a pivot, thinking that fuel economy and cost were going to be the primary drivers in the auto market,” he said. “Some of the quality and fit and finish suffered, and they had issues on the styling front. Now they have to try and get their mojo back.”
A subsequent update, rushed to market by Honda, got higher marks from the automotive press.
The new model faces an even more competitive landscape. The compact utility vehicle market is the hottest segment in U.S. auto sales, and Honda’s own CR-V has this year sneaked ahead of the Civic.
CR-V sales for January to August totaled 229,574, to Civic sales of 221,471, a 4.2% decline from a year earlier, according to research compiled by TrueCar. (Honda Accord sales were 237,623 units during the same period.)
Because the CR-V tends to sell at a higher average transaction price, TrueCar’s numbers show, that model has generated almost $2 billion more in sales revenue than the Civic.
Still, the car remains one of the most important sedans on the market. Through the first half of this year, the Civic leads all other cars in California with sales of 36,881.
Toyota’s Prius has sold 34,008 cars, despite having a 6-year-old design, according to the California Car Dealers Assn.
Last year, Honda sold 325,981 Civics, making it the fifth-bestselling passenger car in America.
“The Civic is the gold standard of compact cars,” said Tom Libby, an analyst at research firm IHS Automotive. The car has a “huge” and loyal group of owners and “a great reputation for reliability.”
Even so, its grip on the market is fading. Back in 2008, the Civic hit a high, accounting for 14.7% of all compact car sales in the U.S. That has slid to 12.8% so far this year, according to Edmunds.com, an auto shopping website.
That’s partly because compact sedans are less popular than in previous years. Two years ago they were the biggest slice of the U.S. auto market, representing 16.3% of total sales. But they have slid to 14.9% this year, Libby said, and have fallen behind non-luxury crossovers.
The 2016 Civic will be powered by either a 1.5-liter, turbocharged, 4-cylinder engine or a more traditional 2.0-liter 4-cylinder engine. The turbo engine will be mated to a CVT transmission. The 2.0-liter powertrain choices will include that transmission or a 6-speed manual option.
Honda boasts the redesigned Civic has 3.7 cubic feet more interior space than earlier models — the largest in the compact car segment, Honda says — with 2 inches more legroom in the rear than in the 2015 version. Trunk space has grown by 2.6 cubic feet.
Since introducing the model in 1972, Honda has sold more than 10 million Civics to American car buyers — 9 million of them manufactured in the U.S.
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