I've got one of the limited edition "Black Magic" Honda Civic DX Coupes -made in America, although it is sold as an official UK car and is UK spec right hand drive. Mine is a 1.5 litre (1493cc) 4-speed auto model with the standard fuel injected SOHC (non-VTEC) D15B7 engine and produces 102bhp.
Good bits first:
The car certainly looks the part, long and sleek, with a nice black paint scheme with a hint of gold when the sun hits it and good looking six spoke ATS alloys, fitted by the dealer before I bought the car. The 15" tyres fit the car well and don't look ridiculous like some of the huge rims you see on cars nowadays.
The car handles well - it feels very light and nippy and certainly brakes quickly enough. The power assisted steering makes manoeuvring the car a breeze and results in a nice quick turning circle without needing iron man muscles to fight the wheel.
My car has power assisted disc front brakes and drum rears. Even with drums the brakes on this car are truly excellent. You only need light pressure on the brake pedal. I have made no modifications
whatsoever and it still almost sends my eyeballs through the windscreen when doing an emergency stop!
The seats are comfy enough - mine has standard seating material, no leather or anything like that. Does the job though.
The gearbox is the 4 speed automatic variety, so just put it in D4 and away you go. The car changes fairly smoothly and giving the throttle a hefty hoof results in "sport mode" whereby the car automatically drops a gear and redlines itself in an effort to get a bit more acceleration. Try not to look at the fuel gauge though!
Speed wise the car does 0-60 in about 10 seconds and around 120mph flat out. Very average really. Fuel economy is around 35mpg. Best I ever got was 38mpg and the worst was 28mpg. Tank range is around 250 miles, dropping to around 200 if you have a lead foot. If you drive carefully and allow it to drop right into the red you might get around 300 miles. Never managed 350 though. For the best MPG, stay under 3,000 RPM - ideally try and stay at 2,500 RPM if you can. Being an automatic it is incredibly difficult to do this, but once you get up to around 55mph and the road is fairly flat it can be done.
The large boot does allow you to carry lots of shopping. 3 people can fit comfortably on the back seat. It's a roomy car.
As far as reliability goes I can't fault Honda engineering. My car is 10 years old and all that has been really changed is the timing belt, the CV joints, two exhaust tailpipes, one centre pipe and a battery. Genuine Honda parts really cost so I'd recommend you avoid official dealers once the car is out of warranty. There are plenty of cheaper equivalent parts available. My tyres are 195/50-15 and start from only £30. The tailpipe was under £100 and so was the centre pipe.
Now the bad bits:
Group 14 insurance seems incredibly high considering this car's abilities. An MR2 sports car is only group 15 so why is this slow, family coupe group 14? Seems ludicrous.
Fuel economy is very lacklustre - 35mpg is acceptable for a sports car but a Honda Civic should really be getting in the mid 40's. No doubt the automatic gearbox has a large part to play in why my car gets such low mpg.
Expensive servicing - genuine Honda dealers charge an arm and a leg for parts and labour. Honda have designed this car so it has to go to a dealer for basic servicing - the oil filter can only be accessed by lifting the car on to ramps. A truely daft design that costs yet more money.
Limited anti theft devices - my car came with central locking and an immobiliser. An alarm would have been appreciated.
Very few extras: No air con, no rear wash wipe, only a single rear fog light. No front driving lights, no cd/mp3 player (only a basic radio cassette), wind up windows, no sat nav.
The headlights are not great either, but fitting Osram Night Breaker H4 bulbs and adjusting them slightly upwards cured this.
Safety: No side impact bars, no airbags, no abs.
Limited tank range: The Civic costs about £30 to fill and for that you only get around 250 miles.
The steering wheel: The smaller Momo steering wheel that was fitted by the dealer might look nice, but does an excellent job of completely blocking the speedo at the 30-60mph range. Having to peer under it (or over it) desperately trying to keep to a 30mph speed limit whilst going down a hill with a greed camera located at the end gets a little tiresome. I prefer to keep my eyes on the road rather than fighting to read the speedo!
As you can probably tell, I was not very impressed with this car. For the high insurance costs I was expecting 0-60 times of around 8 seconds, not 10. The top speed of 120mph seems low given the engine size. I was hoping for at least 130mph. Being a coupe you only have two windows that can be opened and a black car with no air con soon gets boiling hot in summer. A sunroof or rear windows would have been appreciated. Limited mod cons means you feel somewhat cheated by this cars £12,000 price tag.
Overall, this car is ideal for someone who enjoys the look of the coupe and is happy with the expensive insurance and running costs, the limited tank range, the low fuel economy and the poor performance. This car is not fast, despite being featured on "The Fast And The Furious". Driving around with a silly body kit, a massive spoiler, a noisy exhaust and green neons will only get you laughed at and an appearance on barryboys.co.uk!
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Very good if not compact rvw thats tells me all I need to know. The Civic only got a CVT gearbox a couple of years ago but your car is the one model that hails from the USA directly so its no wonder its expensive to run and guzzles petrol. The 2 door coupe was never really popular here as Honda wouldnt supply better models and gave the UK the integra 2 door coupe instead as a filler incentive. Nar
Advantages: Comfortable seating, dashboard console, handling, decent acceleration, great gas mileage, smooth ride, mp3, practical, fun Disadvantages: Full acceleration response occasionally bit slow, rear window blind spot, sometimes selects gears too much
ShadowCreator 26.02.2008 (26.02.2008)
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Review of Honda Civic Coupe
Advantages: Comfortable seating, dashboard console, handling, decent acceleration, great gas mileage, smooth ride, mp3, practical, fun Disadvantages: Full acceleration response occasionally bit slow, rear window blind spot, sometimes selects gears too much
ShadowCreator 26.02.2008 (26.02.2008)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Honda Civic Coupe
Sep 2nd, 2005
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