[Car and Driver] 2016 Honda Civic 1.5L Turbo Sedan review (instrument tested - 0-60 in 6.8)

[administrator]

Car and Driver reviews the all new 2016 Civic 1.5T.

2016 Honda Civic 1.5L Turbo Sedan
With its fourth Civic update in five years, Honda finally gets it right.

Honda will undoubtedly look back on the ninth-generation Civic, that unlovable lump of cheapness, as a lesson in continuous improvement. In so repeatedly flexing its renowned rapid-product-development muscle—overhauling the all-new 2012 Civic just a year later and then adding substantial equipment including a new transmission for 2014—Honda has surely grown stronger. It certainly righted the ship from a business standpoint. Civic sales boomed over the past three years, even if enthusiasts, ourselves included, haven’t much praised the product of Honda’s face-saving efforts. Yet this is not the sort of company to content itself with popularity. Honda has traditionally sought critical acclaim as well, with cars that are more like Spielberg films than blockbusters from Michael Bay.

Fade in, then, on the 10th-generation Civic.

Resembling nothing so much as a shrunken Accord Crosstour, this sedan only appears to be a hatchback. (Additional body styles, including a coupe and a four-door hatchback, also will be available.) And the new Civic rides on a platform that will be shared with the next Accord.

As with other recent Hondas, the top-of-the-line Civic is now called Touring. It’s an apt moniker for a car that plants all four tires on the practical side of a compact-segment continuum that ranges from the appliancelike Toyota Corolla to the apex-predator Volkswagen GTI. But this is also to say that the new Civic is well planted. Among its remedies to the outgoing model are the abilities to go and turn quite well.

A new 1.5-liter four-cylinder available in the pricier trims makes 174 horsepower at 6000 rpm. Fitted with a single-scroll turbocharger pumping up to 16.5 psi of boost, its 162 pound-feet of torque makes it a small-displacement Honda engine with heretofore unheard of grunt from a stoplight. The power is felt but not heard, the engine’s voice corked by the turbocharger and the new car’s extensive sound isolation. Lesser Civics get a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter with only 158 horsepower, which still shames last year’s 143-hp 1.8-liter four. The 1.5-liter engine, the first turbo the Honda brand has offered here in a car, is good enough to speed the 2924-pound 2016 Civic from zero to 60 mph in 6.8 seconds, cutting two seconds off the old car’s run.

Spoiler alert: The Civic performs this feat with a continuously variable transmission tucked between its crankshaft and constant-velocity joints. At least the CVT mostly behaves itself, with the turbo four’s 1700-to-5500-rpm torque plateau keeping it from chasing the ends of the tachometer with your right foot’s every twitch. There is some turbo lag from a standing start, but once revs build, throttle response is better than with most CVTs. Put the transmission in S rather than D and the engine is kept spinning about 1000 rpm higher so that the turbo spools up more quickly. The CVT even does a reasonable imitation of a conventional automatic when the driver mashes the throttle pedal to the floor, “upshifting” at its 6000-rpm power peak. But just as in last year’s CVT-equipped Civic, there is no manual mode to control the ratio slide. At this point, no manual transmission is offered with the turbocharged engine, either, though Honda will sell you a six-speed with the 2.0-liter.

The Civic’s structure is solid and stiff, and the ride quality is excellent. Thick anti-roll bars (1.0 inch in front and 0.7 inch in the rear) help the front struts and rear multilink suspension keep body movements in check. The wallowing understeer common in this class has been uncommonly banished; brake-based torque vectoring crisply points the car into turns in a way the old Civic could never manage. The new variable-ratio electrically assisted power steering is about 10 percent quicker than before, though it’s still too flavorless. Turn the wheel past its annoying on-center dead spot and it does weight up, but without telling you much about what the front tires are doing.

They were mostly squealing during testing. The Civic’s 0.82-g performance on our skidpad trailed the last Civic sedan we tested in 2014. Braking was also off the pace, the car taking 178 feet to stop from 70 mph, 13 feet more than the old model. We blame the Civic’s all-season Firestones, sized at 215/50R-17, for letting down the improved chassis. With slightly more sidewall than the old model’s 45-series tires, it’s a sure bet that this rubber was selected for reasons besides its ability to grip the road, such as ride comfort and low rolling resistance.

The Civic grows 2.9 inches longer, and Honda stretched the wheelbase 1.2 inches, to 106.3. The car is also wider and lower, and combined with an inch drop to its seating position, it feels both more substantial than before and more driver-oriented from behind the wheel. The seats are nearly perfect, and the shifter—useless as it may be in this application—sits at just the right height and distance from the driver’s torso.

Honda replaced its much-maligned two-tiered instrument panel with a single binnacle containing a bright and cleanly arranged display. The interior materials are far richer-feeling than in the ninth-generation’s cabin, with a layered dash design that makes the plastics seem unexpectedly sophisticated. Inside and out, the car gives the impression of being bigger than the specs would indicate. But despite the cabin’s airiness and the exterior’s big overnight-mailer envelope, interior space is only slightly larger than before while the trunk grows two to three cubic feet, depending on equipment. In terms of useful volume, though, the Civic now lives on the larger side of the compact class.

Appreciation of the Civic’s busy exterior styling comes only after stepping away from the car and allowing its many character lines to recede from prominence. Only then does it become possible to notice how the Civic’s deeply drawn metal has a way of bending daylight around the body, making the design seem fluid and well integrated. Some distance also made it harder for us to see the questionable panel gaps of our preproduction car. But by the time we returned the Civic to Honda, a plurality of editors were giving the new look two non-ironically enthusiastic thumbs up.

The Touring-level interior is as packed with equipment as its shiny exterior skin is festooned with creases. A seven-inch infotainment screen sits flush in the center of the dash above a console that seems inspired by the bi-level unit in Honda’s minivan surrogate, the Pilot.

On the left spoke of the Civic’s steering wheel, we discovered the most useful touch-capacitive control we’ve ever encountered in a vehicle: a ribbed plastic volume lever that allows fine adjustment by pressing on its ends, as well as larger decibel changes by sliding a thumb across its length. On the opposite spoke, there’s a cluster of buttons for operating the included adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping system.

We hope Google has a better handle on self-driving than Honda, whose lane-keeping assist starts tugging the wheel to the left immediately after it’s turned on—provided the system can spot the lane markings, which it usually couldn’t. That’s not a bad thing, as it saves the driver from the terror of having the car ride so close to the center stripe that there’s the peril of losing a side mirror or inadvertently testing the car’s frontal offset-collision performance. Each attempt at using the system at different speeds and on different roads fared similarly, leading us to believe that it was either malfunctioning or poorly calibrated. The adaptive cruise control worked better, although its low-speed performance was so noisy and herky-jerky that it was easier to control speed ourselves.

Ultimately, to us, it’s the driving that matters most, and this is where the new Civic acquits itself best. But as Honda has continued to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the Civic in the cause of continuous improvement, it also flirts with overwhelming the Civic with too much styling, too much equipment, too much concern for efficiency, and too many models. This is still just a compact car, after all. Honda has delivered a satisfying rough cut with the new sedan, but it’s the director’s cut we’re keen to see, a car with more focus. We are eagerly awaiting the Si and Type-R performance versions, coming soon.


Highs:
Well-dressed interior; potent, turbocharged power; a willing chassis.

Lows:
More creases than a rack of trousers, uncooperative technology, a good CVT is still a CVT.

Verdict:
A Civic we can applaud, even if it’s not the Civic we want to see.

Specifications
VEHICLE TYPE:front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan

PRICE AS TESTED (EST):$26,500 (base price: $26,500)

ENGINE TYPE:turbocharged and intercooled inline-4, aluminum block and head

DISPLACEMENT:91 cu in, 1497 cc
Power: 174 hp @ 6000 rpm
Torque: 162 lb-ft @ 1700 rpm

TRANSMISSION:continuously variable automatic

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 106.3 in
Length: 182.3 in
Width: 70.8 in Height:55.7 in
SAE volume: F: 52 cu ft R: 43 cu ft
Trunk volume: 15 cu ft
Curb weight: 2924 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS:
Zero to 60 mph: 6.8 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 17.7 sec
Zero to 120 mph: 28.6 sec
Rolling start, 5-60 mph: 7.5 sec
Top gear, 30-50 mph: 3.9 sec
Top gear, 50-70 mph: 4.9 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 15.3 sec @ 94 mph
Top speed (gov limited): 126 mph
Braking, 70-0 mph: 178 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.82 g*

FUEL ECONOMY:
EPA city/highway driving (C/D est): 32/42 mpg
C/D observed: 28 mpg

TEST NOTES:Select the S transmission shift position, gas it, and go. Wheelspin is not an issue. The CVT simulates a step automatic by cycling between 5000 and 6000 rpm.
*Stability-control inhibited

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2016-honda-civic-sedan-15l-turbo-test-review

 

[foehammerone]

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2016-honda-civic-20l-first-drive-review

"We just clocked the turbocharged 2016 Civic at 6.8 seconds to 60, with its 174 horsepower and 162 lb-ft of torque. The 2.0-liter also has an old-school Honda charm that the 1.5-liter’s standard CVT automatic dulls a bit; if character counts, the 2.0-liter makes a case for itself."

3rd paragraph. That is pretty darn good considering 9th gen civic si does it in low 6's. And it also is rated at 31/42 mpg ?? Uhhh.. wow... Can't wait to see what a 10th gen Si is gonna look like.

 

[takemorepills]

dang man much better than I would have expected! Definitely class leading...

 

[G26okie]

Holy shit man. I was not expecting those performance numbers, especially after seeing last night that the torque was lower than I expected. Thats probably about as fast as my 2010 v6 Accord AT, with 100hp less, and it gets much better mileage.

Looks like the main knock is the crappy oem tires.

Love seeing all the different pics we are getting from all angles etc. That color + touring trim is most likely a definite purchase for me within the next few months.

Also to add, these numbers are very close to current Si numbers, very nice.

 

[072.4se]

Zero to 60 mph: 6.8 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 17.7 sec
Zero to 120 mph: 28.6 sec
Rolling start, 5-60 mph: 7.5 sec
Top gear, 30-50 mph: 3.9 sec
Top gear, 50-70 mph: 4.9 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 15.3 sec @ 94

Not too shabby but with a CVT how could they make the drivng experience any worse.
One article mention SI with paddle-shifted CVT with torque converter. Is that correct.
Good numbers though.

 

[G26okie]

Zero to 60 mph: 6.8 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 17.7 sec
Zero to 120 mph: 28.6 sec
Rolling start, 5-60 mph: 7.5 sec
Top gear, 30-50 mph: 3.9 sec
Top gear, 50-70 mph: 4.9 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 15.3 sec @ 94

Not too shabby but with a CVT how could they make the drivng experience any worse.
One article mention SI with paddle-shifted CVT with torque converter. Is that correct.
Good numbers though.

From the reviews I've seen that don't straight up bash it for being a cvt, they say the cvt is excellent and pairs good with the turbo.

 

[///Mookster]

wow definitely class leading numbers here. I think they needed it with nothing but the cvt option on the 1.5. Just thinking about what potential power and performance figures we could see on the Si is getting me really really excited

 

[G26okie]

wow definitely class leading numbers here. I think they needed it with nothing but the cvt option on the 1.5. Just thinking about what potential power and performance figures we could see on the Si is getting me really really excited

If you go by trap speed, the 1.5t touring is as fast as a 9th gen civic Si, and that is a cvt vs a 6 speed manual with lsd.

 

[benjaminh]

It's almost as fast as a 320i, which is what some of us predicted. Where is that BMW fanboy?

"The new 2013 BMW 320i strips the 328i of 60 hp and the result is a 6.7-second 0-60 mph time..."

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/sedans/1307_2013_bmw_320i_first_look/

 

[05 Si]

If you go by trap speed, the 1.5t touring is as fast as a 9th gen civic Si, and that is a cvt vs a 6 speed manual with lsd.

Performance bar has definitely been raised much higher. Now I'm drooling at the thought of what the Si will be capable of.

 

[benjaminh]

Performance bar has definitely been raised much higher. Now I'm drooling at the thought of what the Si will be capable of.

Will the Si get a special version of the 1.5? Or is it getting the 2.0T?

 

[05 Si]

Will the Si get a special version of the 1.5? Or is it getting the 2.0T?

Million dollar question right there.. so many of us have been debating that exact question. Check out this thread - http://www.civicx.com/threads/civic-si-rumored-to-have-around-200hp.59/page-3#post-3697

Consensus of course is that we all want to see a 2.0T in the Si

If the 1.5T in the base models can already achieve these types of numbers despite non-extraordinary output numbers, imagine what a 2.0T can do!

 

[RedTouringMA]

Holy shit man. I was not expecting those performance numbers, especially after seeing last night that the torque was lower than I expected. Thats probably about as fast as my 2010 v6 Accord AT, with 100hp less, and it gets much better mileage.

Looks like the main knock is the crappy oem tires.

Love seeing all the different pics we are getting from all angles etc. That color + touring trim is most likely a definite purchase for me within the next few months.

Also to add, these numbers are very close to current Si numbers, very nice.

The tires they put on mine were garbage Firestones. I went to a tire place and got 75 bucks each for them credit towards a new set.
Settled on a set of Mastercrafts, made by Cooper tires. Perfect cross between good price, excellent traction, quiet ride, and great handling.
The Firestones hydroplaned like mad on my way home from delivery. 3rd day of ownership I took those off and I do not regret it.

 

[takemorepills]

The tires they put on mine were garbage Firestones. I went to a tire place and got 75 bucks each for them credit towards a new set.
Settled on a set of Mastercrafts, made by Cooper tires. Perfect cross between good price, excellent traction, quiet ride, and great handling.
The Firestones hydroplaned like mad on my way home from delivery. 3rd day of ownership I took those off and I do not regret it.

Yeah OEM tires usually suck. It's like they want you in the body shop buying body parts.
I'm surprised you got $75 per tire, that's pretty sweet.

 

[RedTouringMA]

Yeah OEM tires usually suck. It's like they want you in the body shop buying body parts.
I'm surprised you got $75 per tire, that's pretty sweet.

Me too, I told them I wanted to spend no more than 300 bucks max, and they made it fit I paid 275.00 out the door for the new Mastercrafts.
It was a very slow day I think they figured 1 sale was better than no sale.
I figured when snow hit, this was not going to end well for my Civic if I kept the Firestone junk on there.

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