Before I get into my review, let me go back 18 years to when I purchased my 2000 Toyota Celica GT-S. It was a red lift-back coupe that I immediately fell in love with and literally drove it off the showroom floor. Back then, it was cutting edge, with sleek and sexy styling, a lightweight polymer plastic sunroof, a JBL sound-system (which I immediately ripped out and replaced with much better Alpine equipment) and lots of leather bits and pieces in the interior. The version I bought was the GT-S, with the beefed-up 1.8 liter 2ZZGE engine which turned out 180 bhp at 7600 rpm and 133 lb-ft of torque and had a top speed of around 140 mph. It was a high-revving engine that red-lined at 7800 rpm and it’s interesting to note that a version of the 2ZZGE engine was used in the Lotus Elise. I picked the auto transmission over the six-speed manual because, at the time, I didn’t know how to drive stick. It was a fast little car and it handled like it was on rails. I absolutely loved driving it.
Fast-forward 18 years and 392,000 miles and the Celica had gotten long in the tooth. It was leaking oil from the head gasket, front main seal, and behind the timing chain tensioner, and had developed a nasty vibration when stopped in gear at a light or drive-thru window. There was noticeable throttle lag when accelerating into interstate traffic. The clear coat had long-since given up and quit it’s job of protecting the paint, both fog light lenses were broken, the windscreen was cracked, and there were multiple door dings and creases in the body from nimrods who park too closely on the parking lots and throw their doors open like they’re escaping a sinking submarine. Even though I had only broken down once with a dead alternator I could feel this car was beginning to circle the drain. It might have another 50,000 - 100,000 miles left in it, but it would take a lot more money to eek it out than I was willing to put into it. So I finally decided to trade up.
After looking around for a few months and seeing all of my options within my price range, I stumbled across the 2018 Honda Civic Hatchback Sport. Like with the Celica before, I knew as soon as I laid eyes on the Sport that this was the car for me. I didn’t like the Civic coupe and the saloon was ok, but only in the Touring trim. The hatchback fit more within my styling preferences but something about the wheels and rear end of the car was just off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it just didn’t look right. That’s when I saw the Sport. The Sport trim has the same body styling as the top of the line Sport Touring version, with its underbody front and rear spoilers, side skirts, and center-mounted dual exhaust, but is $5000 cheaper because it eschews the sunroof, leather interior, premium infotainment system, technology package, heated mirrors and seats, and other top-end luxuries. This Civic is a driver’s car. It’s a machine without most of the creature comforts we have all come to expect from most modern-day cars. In my opinion, that’s a good thing.
Let’s begin with the engine.
The hatchback Sport trim comes equipped with a 1.5 liter turbocharged 4 cylinder engine that pumps out 180 bhp at 6000 rpm and 162 lb-ft of torque. It doesn’t rev nearly as high as the Celica did, but it will press you back into the seat if you ask it to. With a governed top speed of 125 mph, the sport isn’t setting any records but it will get you where you need to go fairly quickly. Every time I get in and crank the engine, there is a satisfying low growl from the center-mounted dual exhaust that isn’t annoyingly loud. It’s no Fast and Furious fart can; it’s subtle like a tiger waiting in the bushes to rip your face off.
So far, I haven’t noticed an appreciable turbo lag when accelerating. You have to push into the power band before the turbo kicks in but that’s fairly easy to do. I try not to go full-bore from a dead stop, but when passing on the interstate or highway, the power is immediate and on more than one occasion, I have passed a car on the interstate running below the posted speed limit of 70 mph and very quickly found myself running at or above 90 mph. Good gravy, this car is quick!
Fuel efficiency is good too. It is EPA rated at 30 mpg city, 39 mpg highway, and 33 mpg combined and I am actually averaging 40 mpg on the interstate. Not too shabby. There is an eco mode button which is supposed to make the car even more fuel efficient by cutting the throttle response and changing the transmission shift points, but I don’t know by how much. It’s a button I can guarantee I’ll never press.
While not required, Honda recommends running 91 octane fuel for best performance.
The wheels on the Sport trim are 18” as opposed to 16” or 17” on the other Civic trims and mine came wrapped in low-profile 235/40/R18 Continental ContiProContact tires. Combined with the factory sport-tuned suspension, the ride is a little stiff, but not uncomfortable. Steering seems to be very crisp and responsive with a bit of understeer when driving hard through corners. You can feel and hear the road while you are driving but it’s a good feel, the kind that makes you appreciate how a car handles. I have driven some cars (and my wife’s Toyota RAV4 is one of them) where you are completely disconnected from the road and feel like you are floating along, rather than compelling the car to bend to your will. The worst offenders I can think of are the Nissan Maxima and Honda Accord. In both cars, I felt almost out of control, especially when accelerating and passing on a two-lane highway. It rained fairly hard a couple nights ago and I had to be out in the weather. Like my Celica before, the Civic has a tendency to want to hydroplane when water begins to pond on the roadway. Slowing down from 55 mph to 45 mph on the highway alleviated this.
Once again, I chose the automatic transmission over the manual gear box, but for completely different reasons this time around. In the past 18 years, I learned to drive stick but don’t see the benefit of it when 90% of my driving is on the interstate or in stop-and-go city traffic. It’s a constant hassle that I would rather not have to deal with during my long commute. The transmission is a CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) that supplies a near-endless combination of gear ratios to keep the engine running at nominal performance. I have heard horror stories about CVTs experiencing an early demise, but I have heard the same stories about non-CVT transmissions and manual gearboxes alike. Honda has built a reputation for having very reliable cars and I am taking them up on that reputation. Having said that, a CVT in a car like this can be a little unsettling. When you accelerate, you expect to feel the transmission shift as it hits its shift points and with a CVT, that just doesn’t happen. The acceleration keep going, and going, and going with no shift. It’s like you have a very long first gear. It’s not bad, it’s just different. Driving in stop-and-go traffic yields different results. The car sometimes jerks slightly when inching forward or driving slowly through a parking lot, which I have read is the CVT trying to find the correct gear and this is normal. It’s usually not noticeable, though and is quickly forgotten. There is a “sport” mode on the shifter that turns the transmission into a seven-speed clutch-less gearbox operated by paddle shifters on the steering wheel but I have not yet tried it out. For what it’s worth, my Celica had a “manual” mode on the transmission that turned it into a four-speed gearbox with shifter buttons on the steering wheel. It was fun to play with once or twice but the novelty quickly wore off and I never used it again.
The Sport comes with cloth seats instead of leather and I welcome this since my Celica, my wife’s RAV4, and her Mazda 3 before that all had leather seats which I find hot and sticky in the summer and cold and hard in the winter. The seats up front are quite firm and comfortable. I am just shy of 6 feet tall and weight in at 260 lbs (damn pizza and beer!) and the seats feel good to me. I commute about and hour each way to work and home every day and I do not get tired or uncomfortable sitting in the seats for that amount of time. There is ample headroom, which I am not used to, since the roof line of my old Celica sat several inches lower than the Civic. I always knew it was time for a haircut when I could feel my hair touching the headliner. There is enough leg room in the back for an adult to sit comfortably without moving the driver’s seat completely under the steering wheel. The cloth material the seats are made of do tend to attract pet hair so I have a feeling I will toting a lint roller around with me since we have three dogs.
The infotainment system is about as basic as they come nowadays. The factory head unit has a non-touch 5” display without a CD player. My only audio options are AM/FM radio, streaming via bluetooth, or directly connecting a USB stick or media device to the 1 amp USB port in a hidden cubby under the center console. As is usually the case, direct connection via USB sounds better than bluetooth streaming so I only use bluetooth for phone calls. I like to keep my iPhone in my front left trouser pocket so that meant I had to dig out my phone and plug it into the USB port every time I climbed into the car. That in itself is a little annoying but it was quickly made more annoying by the fact that Honda didn’t account for larger phones when they designed the center dash console. When connecting your phone via USB, you either have to fumble around by your knees in the hidden cubby, or run the USB cable up into a second cubby just forward of the shifter and underneath the radio. There is a nice rubberized finish in this cubby to keep your phone from sliding about and a simple cable management system to hold your USB cable in place but it turns out that my iPhone 7+ is too big to fit correctly in the top cubby. There’s not enough room unless I turn the phone at a 45 degree angle inside the cubby and even that puts more stress on the lightning port than I like. I could use a longer USB cable and lay my phone in the passenger seat but I don’t like that and it once again involves me digging my phone out of my pocket every time I get in the car. After a few days of this, I ended up buying a 128GB iPod touch which holds my entire music collection and tucks away nicely in the upper cubby. As soon as I can find a suitable case with a rubberized back, the iPod will transfer to the lower cubby where it will be completely out of sight. Now I can keep my iPhone tucked away in my pocket again. All is good.
I don’t like that the Sport trim doesn’t include Apple CarPlay. You have to get the EX trim or above to get factory CarPlay functionality. The good thing about the Sport trim’s head unit is that nothing is integrated into it except radio controls, phone controls, and the backup camera so I can swap it out with a CarPlay head unit whenever I choose. I have looked at a couple of different head unit options from Sony (XAV-AX100 seems to be the current top choice) and Alpine but I’m pretty satisfied with the stock unit so I may never change it out. We’ll see. If I do replace the head unit, I will probably go with the Alpine iLX-107 since it offers wireless CarPlay.
There is ample storage in the center console under the arm rest and there is even a cup holder big enough to hold a large Yeti cup. Curiously enough, the glove compartment doesn’t lock. This is the first car I have owned without a lockable glove compartment. When I go walking after work, I would usually lock my wallet in the glove compartment so I didn’t have to tote it with me in the pocket of my running shorts. This bothers me a little bit so I may have to start carrying it with me again when I walk.
Storage in the cargo area is good enough for groceries and to hold my backpack and transport packages to the UPS Store for work. Like most other modern hatchbacks, crossovers, and SUVs, there is a cargo cover which hides the contents of your cargo area from plain view when the hatch is closed.
Overall, I love this car. It is comfortable and handles well with enough power to get me where I need to go. After driving it for about two weeks, I still can’t wipe the stupid grin off my face.
Highly recommended.
Fast-forward 18 years and 392,000 miles and the Celica had gotten long in the tooth. It was leaking oil from the head gasket, front main seal, and behind the timing chain tensioner, and had developed a nasty vibration when stopped in gear at a light or drive-thru window. There was noticeable throttle lag when accelerating into interstate traffic. The clear coat had long-since given up and quit it’s job of protecting the paint, both fog light lenses were broken, the windscreen was cracked, and there were multiple door dings and creases in the body from nimrods who park too closely on the parking lots and throw their doors open like they’re escaping a sinking submarine. Even though I had only broken down once with a dead alternator I could feel this car was beginning to circle the drain. It might have another 50,000 - 100,000 miles left in it, but it would take a lot more money to eek it out than I was willing to put into it. So I finally decided to trade up.
After looking around for a few months and seeing all of my options within my price range, I stumbled across the 2018 Honda Civic Hatchback Sport. Like with the Celica before, I knew as soon as I laid eyes on the Sport that this was the car for me. I didn’t like the Civic coupe and the saloon was ok, but only in the Touring trim. The hatchback fit more within my styling preferences but something about the wheels and rear end of the car was just off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it just didn’t look right. That’s when I saw the Sport. The Sport trim has the same body styling as the top of the line Sport Touring version, with its underbody front and rear spoilers, side skirts, and center-mounted dual exhaust, but is $5000 cheaper because it eschews the sunroof, leather interior, premium infotainment system, technology package, heated mirrors and seats, and other top-end luxuries. This Civic is a driver’s car. It’s a machine without most of the creature comforts we have all come to expect from most modern-day cars. In my opinion, that’s a good thing.
Let’s begin with the engine.
The hatchback Sport trim comes equipped with a 1.5 liter turbocharged 4 cylinder engine that pumps out 180 bhp at 6000 rpm and 162 lb-ft of torque. It doesn’t rev nearly as high as the Celica did, but it will press you back into the seat if you ask it to. With a governed top speed of 125 mph, the sport isn’t setting any records but it will get you where you need to go fairly quickly. Every time I get in and crank the engine, there is a satisfying low growl from the center-mounted dual exhaust that isn’t annoyingly loud. It’s no Fast and Furious fart can; it’s subtle like a tiger waiting in the bushes to rip your face off.
So far, I haven’t noticed an appreciable turbo lag when accelerating. You have to push into the power band before the turbo kicks in but that’s fairly easy to do. I try not to go full-bore from a dead stop, but when passing on the interstate or highway, the power is immediate and on more than one occasion, I have passed a car on the interstate running below the posted speed limit of 70 mph and very quickly found myself running at or above 90 mph. Good gravy, this car is quick!
Fuel efficiency is good too. It is EPA rated at 30 mpg city, 39 mpg highway, and 33 mpg combined and I am actually averaging 40 mpg on the interstate. Not too shabby. There is an eco mode button which is supposed to make the car even more fuel efficient by cutting the throttle response and changing the transmission shift points, but I don’t know by how much. It’s a button I can guarantee I’ll never press.
While not required, Honda recommends running 91 octane fuel for best performance.
The wheels on the Sport trim are 18” as opposed to 16” or 17” on the other Civic trims and mine came wrapped in low-profile 235/40/R18 Continental ContiProContact tires. Combined with the factory sport-tuned suspension, the ride is a little stiff, but not uncomfortable. Steering seems to be very crisp and responsive with a bit of understeer when driving hard through corners. You can feel and hear the road while you are driving but it’s a good feel, the kind that makes you appreciate how a car handles. I have driven some cars (and my wife’s Toyota RAV4 is one of them) where you are completely disconnected from the road and feel like you are floating along, rather than compelling the car to bend to your will. The worst offenders I can think of are the Nissan Maxima and Honda Accord. In both cars, I felt almost out of control, especially when accelerating and passing on a two-lane highway. It rained fairly hard a couple nights ago and I had to be out in the weather. Like my Celica before, the Civic has a tendency to want to hydroplane when water begins to pond on the roadway. Slowing down from 55 mph to 45 mph on the highway alleviated this.
Once again, I chose the automatic transmission over the manual gear box, but for completely different reasons this time around. In the past 18 years, I learned to drive stick but don’t see the benefit of it when 90% of my driving is on the interstate or in stop-and-go city traffic. It’s a constant hassle that I would rather not have to deal with during my long commute. The transmission is a CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) that supplies a near-endless combination of gear ratios to keep the engine running at nominal performance. I have heard horror stories about CVTs experiencing an early demise, but I have heard the same stories about non-CVT transmissions and manual gearboxes alike. Honda has built a reputation for having very reliable cars and I am taking them up on that reputation. Having said that, a CVT in a car like this can be a little unsettling. When you accelerate, you expect to feel the transmission shift as it hits its shift points and with a CVT, that just doesn’t happen. The acceleration keep going, and going, and going with no shift. It’s like you have a very long first gear. It’s not bad, it’s just different. Driving in stop-and-go traffic yields different results. The car sometimes jerks slightly when inching forward or driving slowly through a parking lot, which I have read is the CVT trying to find the correct gear and this is normal. It’s usually not noticeable, though and is quickly forgotten. There is a “sport” mode on the shifter that turns the transmission into a seven-speed clutch-less gearbox operated by paddle shifters on the steering wheel but I have not yet tried it out. For what it’s worth, my Celica had a “manual” mode on the transmission that turned it into a four-speed gearbox with shifter buttons on the steering wheel. It was fun to play with once or twice but the novelty quickly wore off and I never used it again.
The Sport comes with cloth seats instead of leather and I welcome this since my Celica, my wife’s RAV4, and her Mazda 3 before that all had leather seats which I find hot and sticky in the summer and cold and hard in the winter. The seats up front are quite firm and comfortable. I am just shy of 6 feet tall and weight in at 260 lbs (damn pizza and beer!) and the seats feel good to me. I commute about and hour each way to work and home every day and I do not get tired or uncomfortable sitting in the seats for that amount of time. There is ample headroom, which I am not used to, since the roof line of my old Celica sat several inches lower than the Civic. I always knew it was time for a haircut when I could feel my hair touching the headliner. There is enough leg room in the back for an adult to sit comfortably without moving the driver’s seat completely under the steering wheel. The cloth material the seats are made of do tend to attract pet hair so I have a feeling I will toting a lint roller around with me since we have three dogs.
The infotainment system is about as basic as they come nowadays. The factory head unit has a non-touch 5” display without a CD player. My only audio options are AM/FM radio, streaming via bluetooth, or directly connecting a USB stick or media device to the 1 amp USB port in a hidden cubby under the center console. As is usually the case, direct connection via USB sounds better than bluetooth streaming so I only use bluetooth for phone calls. I like to keep my iPhone in my front left trouser pocket so that meant I had to dig out my phone and plug it into the USB port every time I climbed into the car. That in itself is a little annoying but it was quickly made more annoying by the fact that Honda didn’t account for larger phones when they designed the center dash console. When connecting your phone via USB, you either have to fumble around by your knees in the hidden cubby, or run the USB cable up into a second cubby just forward of the shifter and underneath the radio. There is a nice rubberized finish in this cubby to keep your phone from sliding about and a simple cable management system to hold your USB cable in place but it turns out that my iPhone 7+ is too big to fit correctly in the top cubby. There’s not enough room unless I turn the phone at a 45 degree angle inside the cubby and even that puts more stress on the lightning port than I like. I could use a longer USB cable and lay my phone in the passenger seat but I don’t like that and it once again involves me digging my phone out of my pocket every time I get in the car. After a few days of this, I ended up buying a 128GB iPod touch which holds my entire music collection and tucks away nicely in the upper cubby. As soon as I can find a suitable case with a rubberized back, the iPod will transfer to the lower cubby where it will be completely out of sight. Now I can keep my iPhone tucked away in my pocket again. All is good.
I don’t like that the Sport trim doesn’t include Apple CarPlay. You have to get the EX trim or above to get factory CarPlay functionality. The good thing about the Sport trim’s head unit is that nothing is integrated into it except radio controls, phone controls, and the backup camera so I can swap it out with a CarPlay head unit whenever I choose. I have looked at a couple of different head unit options from Sony (XAV-AX100 seems to be the current top choice) and Alpine but I’m pretty satisfied with the stock unit so I may never change it out. We’ll see. If I do replace the head unit, I will probably go with the Alpine iLX-107 since it offers wireless CarPlay.
There is ample storage in the center console under the arm rest and there is even a cup holder big enough to hold a large Yeti cup. Curiously enough, the glove compartment doesn’t lock. This is the first car I have owned without a lockable glove compartment. When I go walking after work, I would usually lock my wallet in the glove compartment so I didn’t have to tote it with me in the pocket of my running shorts. This bothers me a little bit so I may have to start carrying it with me again when I walk.
Storage in the cargo area is good enough for groceries and to hold my backpack and transport packages to the UPS Store for work. Like most other modern hatchbacks, crossovers, and SUVs, there is a cargo cover which hides the contents of your cargo area from plain view when the hatch is closed.
Overall, I love this car. It is comfortable and handles well with enough power to get me where I need to go. After driving it for about two weeks, I still can’t wipe the stupid grin off my face.
Highly recommended.
