Honda has confirmed that its new Civic hatchback will go on sale in March with a starting price of €23,750. It might take a while to find some sales traction though – at first only petrol engines will be available, with the new 1.6 iDTEC diesel not entering production until later this year.
At least those new engines will be cutting edge – they are a 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo with 127bhp or a 1.5-litre turbo four-cylinder model with 180bhp.
As an entry price, that’s significantly higher than most of the Civic’s main rivals, but Honda is compensating for that by fitting, as standard to all models, its new Honda Sensing safety suite.
Autonomous emergency braking system
That consists of an autonomous emergency braking system, lane departure warning and lane keeping steering assist and “Road Departure Mitigation”, which uses data from the windscreen-mounted camera to detect whether the car is veering off the road. It then uses the power steering to apply subtle corrections to keep the vehicle in its lane, and in certain situations can also apply braking force.
Other safety features include adaptive cruise control which can also compensate for other drivers cutting sharply in front of it, traffic sign recognition and an intelligent speed limiter.
