The Honda Civic isn’t as ubiquitous as it once was, having largely fallen prey to the same SUV contenders as other once big-name hatchbacks. And for British buyers, it perhaps isn’t as appealing as when it had the cachet of being built in Swindon.
Nonetheless, the Civic remains important to the brand, sitting in the top three for UK sales after the Honda Jazz supermini and the Honda HR-V small SUV.
What’s more, Europe (and the UK) couldn’t be closer to the Civic’s development. Rather than receive a global car to then tweak for its market, Honda Europe has led the research and development this time round, knowing that its customer expectations are greater than those of the Americans and the Japanese.
There’s plenty of change in this 11th-generation hatchback. It has a hybrid powertrain for the first time – and indeed only a hybrid powertrain, completing Honda’s European lineup of electrified mainstream models, as it set out to do three years ago.