2013 Honda Civic EX-L Sedan Review
2013 Honda Civic EX-L Sedan Review
- For one regrettably long decade, the rolling stock of the midwestern
United States consisted of Pontiac Grand Ams and Dodge Shadows.
Seriously, the place was filthy with them. This seems to prove what we
have long believed: A car’s sales success often has a weak correlation
to its greatness.
And so, we arrive at the 2012 Honda Civic, which was an undeniable sales success for the company. Honda
says it sold 331,872 of the then all-new Civics in 2012, making it the
bestselling car in its class that year. We presume that most buyers are
perfectly satisfied with their purchases.
And yet, for the long-term health of the model’s and the company’s
reputation, Honda has performed a thorough do-over of the Civic for
2013, modifying its look, its interior ambience, its front structure,
and its suspension and steering systems.
With new front and rear styling, Honda grafts a shiny smile to the
formerly sad, sluglike shape of the four-door Civic. Honda says it’s a
more “emotional” and “youthful” design. This, of course, means nothing.
But we like the new look just fine.
Honda redid the interior as well, giving it a more conventional look and
feel, with a black upper dash, a mildly reworked center stack, some
shiny trim, and leather-like graining in place of the strange
bacteria-in-a-petri-dish look. The ambience is more upscale. That the
car also carries more sound-deadening insulation and thicker glass to
block noise helps a great deal. Honda did not reduce the number of small
information displays that, at four, seems about 50 percent too many.
With new narrow-offset crash tests looming, Honda beefed up the Civic’s
front structure. We did not test the efficacy of this modification. The
revised structure adds almost 50 pounds of steel to the front end. That,
plus more standard equipment, such as a rearview camera, had our 2013
tester weighing in at 2876 pounds, 125 more than the 2012 Civic sedan
we tested. The weight gain hasn’t affected the car’s acceleration
times, which remain about a second behind the class-leading Ford Focus.
Honda hasn’t made any changes to the powertrain, a weak-kneed 140-hp
1.8-liter four and five-speed auto.
It wasn’t the 2012 Civic’s
pokiness that bothered us most, though. It was the soft and numb
suspension and steering responses that inspired us to describe it as
“alarmingly Lincoln-like.”
We’re delighted to report Honda
has starched the suspension with thicker anti-roll bars (up 0.9 inch in
front and 0.2 inch at the rear), stiffer springs (plus 15 percent
front, 18 percent rear), and retuned dampers. The effect is almost
transformative. The ride is now controlled without being harsh,
imparting a distinctly less-cheap feeling. The company also quickened
the steering ratio by 8 percent (from 16.1:1 to 14.9:1), which makes the
Civic
feel like the small, light car it is. Unfortunately, Honda has added
zero percent additional feedback to the operation of the steering.