Friday, August 09, 2013

2004 Honda Civic versus 2013 Honda Civic


The Civic above is like ours, except ours isn't a hybrid. I was too lazy to pull the Civic out of the garage for a decent photo. But you get the idea.

The Civic below is the one I drove today. It is more refined (particularly with respect to handling and sound deadening) and has a lot more features. The brakes are light years ahead of the 2004's. The greenhouse/visibility is extraordinary. The seat was quite uncomfortable though, with zero upper back support.

I drove a 30,000 mile example that was a bit beat up. The Check Engine light was on. The HVAC fan made a high pitch whistle/whine, no matter what speed I had it set. It also made a non-descript and mysterious groaning sound whenever I accelerated.

It's a fine compact car, but not as fun or as exciting as the Mazda3 or Audi A3 that I recently drove via Zipcar.


The instrument clusters. Night and day. This is from our base model DX Civic.

This is from the new Civic. I'm not a huge fan of the large tach that is separate and inches closer than the speedo. It was very distracting.

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