Canada's Best-Selling Car is a Great Used Buy Honda has made a tradition of replacing existing models every four or five years. In 2006 it was the venerable Honda Civic's turn to be redesigned, with the new model improving on the old one in almost every single way. And given just how good the old model was; that's quite an accomplishment.
When it was introduced in 2001, the then-new Civic was greeted with open arms as an improvement over the outgoing model in terms of quality, fit and finish. Honda touted it as vastly improved, and once one
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Honda's venerable Civic was all-new in 2001, with newer, edgier, and more European styling than ever before. (Photo: Honda Canada)
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got past the new projector headlights and edgy body styling, it was apparent that Honda had focused this particular redesign around improving the Civic's interior. It looked newer, larger, and generally more driver friendly. In fact, it grew 66 mm (2.6 inches) in length to give a larger total interior capacity of 2,953 litres (104.3 cubic feet); a feat made interesting by the fact that the new car lost 13 mm (a 1/2 inch) in overall length. But as good as that sounds, that increase in length within the shortened car seemed to have been added to the rear of the cabin, resulting (in the sedan model) in the wheel well protruding into the rear door opening to an extent that made ingress and egress somewhat more difficult than it should be. Also, the
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| The new Civic boasted a larger interior than previous models although a small rear door opening made accessing the smallish rear seat rather difficult. (Photo: Honda Canada) |
shallow door opening angles didn't help matters in this area. Of course, clambering into the rear quarters of the coupe demanded the requisite front seat and belt fumbling before plopping into the rather smallish back seat, and once there, one could only admire the lack of storage space and foot room. That said, the front seatbacks were blessedly soft, which did prevent bruised kneecaps for those over 5-foot-10.
Both coupe and sedan have provisions to seat five, with the sedan offering more room all around for the occupants thanks to its wider body and taller height even though the coupe is (strangely enough) longer. The materials used are your average resilient Honda stuff, with fabric seats and a waterfall console that's remarkably similar to the previous generation's, albeit with infinitely adjustable rheostats making the climate control switchgear feeling vastly more luxurious than the outgoing model's multi-position switches. It is by no means an exciting interior, being mostly monochromatic, but it's durable and well thought-out, with most controls coming easily to hand, and operating just as they should, although some will find the stereo controls finicky.
In it's first year, the seventh-generation Civic was available in both coupe and sedan forms, with the coupe coming in a veritable alphabet soup of DX, EX, HX, and LX forms, while the sedan came in DX, EX, GX, and LX
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| The interior was spartan, with leather seats being totally unavailable, and the base model almost completely devoid of power options. (Photo: Honda Canada) |
guises... in America at least. Canadians said hello to the seventh generation Civic in only two models of sedan; DX and LX, with an additional Si model of coupe that is essentially the same as the American EX. Of all the models, the EX/Si models are the ones to have if you're looking for options, coming standard with a sunroof, air conditioning, power windows, power door locks, a CD player and most importantly, ABS brakes; an option strangely available on only the EX/Si and GX models. Conversely, the DX is the most bare bones, and is completely devoid of all amenities (excepting the standard AM/FM radio), but the real penny-pinchers will be drawn to the HX and GX models. Although more pricey, and harder to come by, both boasted lower emissions and most importantly (especially now) better fuel economy.
