Honda CR-V

Author's product rating:

Safety	Excellent
Comfort	Excellent
Road Handling	Excellent
Looks	Good
Features	Good

Advantages:	Spacious, economical to run with good handling . A fun ride .
Disadvantages:	See text of opinion .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I’d better warn you now that this isn’t going to be one of those very technical reviews that are done about cars. My technical knowledge ends roughly where the ignition key goes in and certainly doesn’t extend to putting petrol into the tank. When people talk about “overhead camshaft” I gaze upwards and wonder where it is. I’d simply like to tell you why we got the car, the good bits and the odd niggle.

We’ve got two big dogs. When we had one dog and a Honda Civic the dog would get into the back of the car, and sit there quietly, until she was sick that is, but that’s another story. We then acquired Rosie, who’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback, and she decided that sitting on the back seat wasn’t such a good idea, when there were all sorts of other places that looked so much more interesting. We tried harnessing them, but getting two dogs who don’t want to be harnessed into the car in a public place isn’t easy. I then read about someone who’d been killed whilst driving a car when the person behind her was catapulted into her neck when she braked suddenly. As the car was due for a change we decided to look at either an estate car, or a sports utility vehicle, as I believe they’re called, so that we could fit a dog grid.

We looked at the RAV4 first, but it didn’t handle well, and the dogs would have had to go on a diet to get in the back comfortably. The CR-V wouldn’t necessarily have been the next choice, but we spotted this one, aged six months, with automatic transmission which I need, and at a considerable discount. We drove it and liked it, and the dogs gave their consent, so it came home with us.

Why does anyone get rid of a good car when it’s only six months old, you’ll be asking! We did too. Apparently the previous owner had bought it with the intention of using it to tow a horsebox, but found that it wasn’t suitable. I suspect that this might have had something to do with the kerb weight of what he was towing and the fact that it was possibly unbraked, but we didn’t intend to use the car to tow anything, so it didn’t really concern us. If you were intending to use it to tow a caravan it’s something I’d clarify with the dealer.

The CR-V manoeuvres well. There’s power-assisted steering and it has a low front and rear overhang and seems to turn on the proverbial sixpence. One problem I have found, and it will be common to all SUV’s is that it’s difficult to see obstacles below window level on the passenger side. This explains the passionate encounter that I had with a trolley-park rail in Asda’s car park which took a moment to perform and a frightening amount of time and money to put right.

It’s an all-wheel drive vehicle but I’m not going to give you tales of my off-road exploits, as you might find the location vaguely reminiscent of Tesco’s car park. I have had it down rough country tracks, and it handled well. My daughter, who lives in Nepal where she drives a Discovery from necessity, has regularly driven the CR-V. She likes the car, but says that she doesn’t think it would cope with what the Nepalese laughingly refer to as road, but which we would call rough terrain with potholes. The car copes with snow well, but not so well with ice. I had one memorable morning when the car slid off down a road that I hadn’t been down for years, and I was left wondering if we’d bought a rather expensive sledge.

The ride is very comfortable, and the seats well-upholstered. We’ve got a radio-cassette player with a detachable front, but it’s fiddly to fit, and only having one good hand at the moment I usually end up swearing at it, and, in consequence, don’t use it as much as I would like – it’s not worth the hassle on a relatively short journey.

The tailgate is split – the top half lifts up, whilst the bottom half opens as normal. This is quite handy if you’ve just got something small to put in, but annoying if you’ve got two large dogs, as you need three actions to get them into the car: unlock tailgate, lift top section, use handle on bottom section. The boot capacity is 374 litres with the rear seat up, and 668 with them down. Litres mean nothing to me in this context – but the dogs are separated from the main body of the car by a dog grid and there’s adequate room for them both to lie down. We have a cover that fits just under window height so that you can leave your shopping in there without tempting every ne’er-do-well in the neighbourhood. It’s cleverly coloured so that it doesn’t actually look as though there’s a cover there at all. There’s also a boot tray in case you’re transporting anything messy (no – not the dogs: they refused!), but it’s not an easy thing to store when you’re not using it. There are cargo anchoring points in the floor of the well, and a cargo hook on the door. I’ve never worked out what you’d use this for, and it has a habit of swinging round in travel. I inevitably end up with a dog lead tangled round it! There’s a well under the carpet in the boot area which is meant to be a repository for dirty boots and the like, but we’ve never used it, simply because of the logistics of it. You have to have everything out of the boot, including the dogs, to use the well, and then replace them afterwards. What do you do with two dogs whilst you’re changing your boots? Perhaps it just doesn’t work for us – you might be more organised. The spare wheel is mounted on the rear of the tailgate, but the mounting is quite low and doesn’t impede rear vision. You can get a stainless steel cover for it, but that costs extra.

The interior of the CR-V has a “flat floor” design, so it’s technically possible to move between the front and the back – or so the literature says. I can’t see that I would want to, and I would have to be a lot more nimble than I am now, but I would imagine that a child could do it quite easily. I’m not certain whether this is a good thing or a bad thing! Between the front seats there’s a fold-down tray, which has a special section for a cup.

ABS is fitted as standard, and there are two full-sized airbags for driver and passenger. The beams in the side doors are impact-resistant and there are the usual crumple zones front and rear.

I like the dashboard layout – but then this is our third Honda on the trot, and there is more than a passing similarity between them. Everything seems to come easily to hand. Driving the car is easy – particularly as you’re that bit higher up on the road than you are in a normal saloon car.

You’re wondering if it’s got an engine, aren’t you? Well, I’m told it has. It 1973cc and the published fuel economy figures on manual transmission are 22.4 mpg for urban, and 32.8mpg extra-urban. Our car has automatic transmission, and we’re more than happy with the fuel consumption: the published figures suggest that the auto transmission is greedier in town, but less of a guzzler once it gets on the open road. The CR-V does like the open road, and with good acceleration there’s no problem about overtaking.

I think the most annoying thing that I’ve found with the CR-V is the “remote keyless entry”. You know – you flick this thing vaguely in the direction of the car, lights flash, and there’s a satisfying “clunk” as all the doors unlock. Yes, I’d like to know about it too! Sometimes you have to get so close to get it to operate that passers-by wonder if you’re trying to nick something. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Sometimes the lights flash, but there’s no “clunk”. Once the car battery drained through my efforts, and the RAC had to come to the rescue. We’ve had a faulty car battery replaced under warranty, and I’ve replaced the batteries in the handset – but you’re never quite convinced that it’s reliable.

Over the years we’ve had quite a few cars, from the cheap to the expensive, and this is the one that we both like the best, but I’ll leave you with my Grandson’s description of the car to his father. “It’s got two windbags in the front”.

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