With a pending test drive of the Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC SR here are my thoughts about the car before getting behind the wheel.
What is the Honda Civic Tourer all about?
The Honda Civic is Honda’s flagship best selling car in the hatch back model, so why not extend that great car in to an estate car, creating the Tourer? The Civic Tourer on test in the SR spec which is one notch away from the top spec (EX-Plus). The SR spec gets some additional features over the standard model such as; 17″ alloy wheels, Sat-Nav, voice activation, leather interior with heated front seats, and Adaptive Damper System.
The Civic Tourer comes with either a 1.8-litre petrol or a 1.6-litre diesel engine. The model I will be testing is the 1.6-litre i-DTEC diesel engine. This engine creates 120bhp and 300Nm of torque. The power goes though a manual gearbox to the front wheels. This means the car will get from 0-60mph in 10.5 seconds and do a top speed of 121mph. But most importantly this engine and gearbox configuration can return up to 72MPG which is an insane level of economic performance, especially for a car of this size.
Expectations – Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC SR Manual
As the Civic is a very popular car, and from previous experience of owning an earlier generation EP3 model, I expect great things from this car.
The MPG figures stated for this car are extremely high at 72MPG. As we know these figure are produced in certain test facilities and in real life we expect much lower. However I would still expect good MPG from my week with the car. Even though I will be spending parts of my journey in town I would still like to be getting over 50MPG come the end of the week.
The Civic in its hatchback form does limit the type of people that will buy the car, moving to the Tourer variant opens the car up to people that need the additional space. I wound expect the boot space in this Tourer to be very practical and I have seen pictures of the magic back seats that fold up, which should really make this car extremely practical in real life.
Behind the wheel is where I will ask the most of the car. The car weighs around 1,300kg and with only 120bhp under the bonnet I hope that this doesn’t make the Civic feel like a pain to drive once you have 4 people and a bit of language in the car. I am hopeful that the Civic maintains its driving ability and still feels alive even in its super-adult, super-practical configuration that we see here.
Also learn more about the Honda Civic EP3 Type R.
After our time with the car we will report back and let you know just how good we think the Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC SR Manual is and will have a gallery for you to take a look at too.
Supplied by: Honda
