I blame the Americans. No, not for the crisis in the Middle East, not for global warming, not even for fast food. However, I do hold the Americans responsible for making my car ugly. The Honda Civic Hybrid I’ve been lent does many things admirably. It’s a smooth, reasonably well equipped cruiser that is doing its little bit to save the planet by using less fuel than it otherwise would.
This is because its hybrid motor uses power that would otherwise be wasted, for example during braking. It stores it in batteries in the boot of the car. Then, for example during hard acceleration, the batteries power an electric motor that helps out the relatively small petrol engine. Despite using electric power to move along, the Honda is not a plug-in electric car. It generates all its electricity itself. Fuel economy is around 40mpg, not that outstanding, I know, and rather less than the official figures suggest, but better than if it was running on petrol alone, and arguably better than a diesel equivalent.
All well and good, then, but it comes packaged in a shape that I still can’t learn to love; a very slab-sided four-door saloon with wheels that look too small. It could, I feel sure, have been made in the funky style of the latest generation Civic hatchback, which you may have seen brightening up the roads. However that futuristic version of the Civic is produced (in Swindon) only for the European market, because we in this corner of the globe like our cars that way. The Japanese and, most crucially, the Americans, like cars with a proper boot, and they are the customers that the hybrid is really aimed at, so that is why the Civic Hybrid looks the way it does when it comes out of the factory in Japan. It gets a boring, normal grille in place of the hatch’s transparent plastic one. The Civic Hybrid even has a more conservative dashboard design. So the most technologically adventurous member of the Civic family still looks the least interesting.
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