Instrumented Test
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A whiff of sportiness with less petroleum aftertaste.
Now that today’s Civic sedan is around the same size as the Accord of the late ’80s—thus assuming the spot in Honda’s lineup for tidy, practical transportation—the two-door Civic coupe is pivotal to keeping young, sporty-car buyers from abandoning the nameplate. Important to that mission is delivering something that doesn’t feel cheap in the face of increasingly sophisticated competition.
So, having performed a quick refresh of the Civic sedan for 2013—just a year after its intro—to erase signs of cost-cutting and restore some dynamic goodness, Honda turned its attention to the coupe for 2014. The coupe’s rear fascia and taillamps and entire front end now are more styled and slightly dressier than before, and the coupe also received suspension updates with a stiffer rear anti-roll bar and 10-percent higher spring rates.
The 2014 Civic coupe gains three horsepower and a single lb-ft of torque over last year’s model, courtesy of a lower-restriction exhaust shared with the sedan. The big mechanical change for 2014 is the new continuously variable transmission that replaces last year’s five-speed automatic. (It’s standard with EX and EX-L models, optional on base LX cars.) Honda says that reduced internal friction and a wider ratio spread compared to last year’s auto contribute to improved EPA fuel-economy ratings of as high as 30 mpg city and 39 mpg highway. At cruising speed with the CVT in drive, the tall overdrive ratios cause the engine to spend a lot of time lumbering along at a lazy 1400 rpm, dropping to 1000 rpm when coasting—good for fuel economy, but not particularly sporty. We saw 32 mpg in mixed driving, a 5-mpg improvement over the last five-speed automatic Civic we tested, a 2013 EX-L sedan.
Honda’s gone its own way with CVTs, and we’ve rated its stepless automatics better than most. At wide-open throttle, the engine doesn’t just swing to redline and stay there until you lift, as is typical with most CVTs. Rather, engine speed initially rises to just under 4000 rpm and climbs proportionally with road speed until topping out at 7400. If a driver wishes to further minimize the disconnect between road speed and engine speed, all CVT Civic coupes have steering-wheel-mounted shift paddles to control seven fixed ratios. They’re handy for, say, downshifting a couple of “gears” when entering a sharp, downhill sweeper. With the shifter in drive, pressing a paddle provides control for a few seconds before the CVT takes over again; put the shifter in Sport, and your paddle press is gospel until you say so—or you choose a gear that would blow the four-cylinder sky high or cause it to bog.
It Looks Spunkier
While the 143-hp 1.8-liter four and 8.6-second 0–60 run fall far short of high performance, the fact that the coupe is 1.5 inches shorter and squattier than the Civic sedan help it at least seem more vivacious. The car’s brake pedal has crisp response and aggressive bite. Shod with the EX-L’s upsized 215/45-17 all-season tires, the coupe stopped from 70 mph in a tidy 169 feet, 13 shorter than a Hyundai Elantra coupe. The Civic coupe managed 0.82 g of lateral grip, a modest number but better than that Elantra by 0.04 g.
The Honda exhibits good body control and flat handling with almost no body roll in corners, but the car never quite settles down—it’s always a bit jouncey, even on roads that seem smooth and flat. Impact harshness is rarely punitive, but the car still has a thin-wall sound and feel despite NVH improvements made last year. Steering turn-in is quick, but the electrically assisted system feels overboosted and there’s no sense of effort buildup as the tires load up in turns. And because there’s
Our $23,330 EX-L test car came standard with a leather-trimmed interior, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, piano-black trim, heated front seats, nicely padded front armrests, and padded vinyl trim on the door and dash uppers. Push-button start, automatic climate control, piano-black trim, and the CVT also were included.
We’re Touched
The 2014 Civic coupe also has a new seven-inch center touch screen that gives smartphone-like tap, swipe, and pinch control of infotainment functions, including Pandora playback, text-messaging functionality, and more. The car also has an HDMI interface to play audio or video—the latter when parked—from compatible devices. But the screen has a low-cost look and some operations take multiple attempts to execute; the radio’s volume slider, for example, is balky, with no two inputs producing the same result. Fortunately, there are redundant steering-wheel controls for that function.
At least the CVT is more predictable. But, happily, it just so happens that 23 percent of Civic coupe buyers opt for the five-speed manual transmission. The shifting of gears might cut into time spent fussing with the touch screen, but think of the money you’ll save on your data plan by not focusing on AhaPandoraBook or whatever.
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