Introduction

It's hard to find a more competitive new car market than the compact class. And it's more than just price, as the number of entries has skyrocketed in recent years. Honda once led the class, in every measure that mattered, from performance to price to quality to pizzazz. And just as important image-wise, Honda led the hot, sport compact niche. In fact, many credit Honda with unknowingly creating the sport compact craze with the Civic CRX. In recent years, however, the four-door Civic, the sedan that carried the water for the company, has been more bland than beautiful, more efficient than exciting. No more. With the redesigned, restyled, rejuvenated 2006 Honda Civic models, the company has returned to the fray with renewed energy. Across the line, there's more power, improved ride and handling, and better people packaging. There are more choices as well: a sporty new Civic Si coupe, a fully populated tier of coupes and sedans with new engines and transmissions, and a more efficient and effective Hybrid sedan. The jury's still out on some of the more ambitious styling ventures, but overall, the new swoopy look turns heads and generates smiles. Prices start at $14,560 MSRP for the base coupe with a 140-horsepower four-cylinder engine and five-speed manual transmission and top out at $22,150 for the gas/electric Hybrid sedan. In between there's a sedan listing at $15,560 with the new five-speed automatic. The Si starts at $20,290. There are other cars in the class that undercut these figures, but the Civic includes important safety features, including antilock brakes and side-impact airbags as standard equipment, that many others leave on the option list.

Walkaround

Honda re-did everything for 2006. Not only are powertrains updated and upgraded, and a new platform developed, but the sheetmetal is new. Not a single body panel is carried over from 2005. The sedans and coupes don't share any body panels. And trim elements and markings distinguish each iteration. The platform underneath is new for 2006, seriously strengthened in rigidity, stiffness and crash absorption capacities, with minor adjustments to accommodate the varying dimensions of the coupe and sedan body styles. As part of its campaign to revitalize the Civic's appeal to the sport compact market, Honda has incorporated reinforced mounting points and gussets to allow suspension and certain other modifications without diminishing body integrity. From the front, styling differences are subtle, but marked. A polished, horizontal bar dominates the sedan grille. Slender headlamp assemblies angle upwards as they curve around the fenders. A single, broad air intake fills the lower portion of the fascia. The coupe grille appears more open, with the Honda logo suspended on a matte-black framework. An understated badge tucked away in the far right reaches of the grille identifies the sporty Si version. The coupe headlights are more sharply outlined. The lower air intake opens between two, geometric recesses that feed cooling air to the front disc brakes and house the optional fog lamps. The front ends, but especially the coupes', push the leading corners down and outward, emphasizing the 2006's wider track (the distance side to side between the tires), which grows by more than an inch in front and by more than two inches in back over the 2005's. Save for a lower body character line, drawn slightly higher on the coupe than on the sedan, the sides of the new Civic are more slab than sensuous. Understated fender blisters, more pronounced on the coupe, break up the otherwise featureless expanse. What excitement there is in the side view is in the sleekness of what Honda calls a monoform design. A central expression of this is the windshield, the leading edge of which reaches into the hood all the way to the middle of the front wheel wells, pushing the design concept of "cab forward" to a new extreme. On the coupe, the windshield is raked at a radical 21.9 degrees, markedly steeper than the '05's 26.7 degrees, even exceeding the Acura NSX's 23.9 degrees. And the sedan's matches the NSX's, dropping from the '05's 29.1 degrees. The sail (the body panel aft of the rear side window) is unique to each model as well. The coupe's forms an acute angle emphasizing the two-door body style, while the sedan's curves down over the rear door's trailing edge, pulling the eye through the higher roofline. The coupe's be-spoilered, rounded rear profile suggests swiftness. The sedan's somewhat abbreviated trunk lid and chopped off tail end adds perceived mass to the tightly proportioned, smallish sedan. Likewise, the rear view of each body style differs markedly. The coupe's sloping trunk lid settles into a deep cut in the rear bumper, with the license plate sheltered in an equally deep recess. The sedan's trunk lid drops in an almost vertical, unrelieved sheer from a relatively high crest across the top, all very BMW-like in presence.

Interior Features

If the 2006 Civic's exterior is new, the '06's interior borders on shocking. First impression of the instrument arrangement is of a video game. Controls are for the most part where they should be, but not necessarily as they should be. There's little symmetry in organization or shape of features and interfaces. It's not an unpleasant look, but one that requires some acclimation. Ironically, perhaps, the interiors are indistinguishable across the full line, with only minor differences necessitated by the different powertrains. Splayed across the top of the seemingly unending dash in front of the driver is a hooded opening with a digital speedometer between LCD coolant temperature and fuel level gauges. Down below, in the more common place for the instrument panel, in the half circle formed by the top half of the steering wheel, that is, there's a large, round, analog tachometer. To each side of this lower IP are large, irregular vent registers. Centered in the dash above the climate control panel is either an LCD window combining the navigation display and audio settings and, in the Hybrid, a selection of graphic depictions of the hybrid system's functions and status or a stereo control head with the pertinent accoutrements. To the right of this squished pod-like arrangement, the dash curves away from the front seat passenger and houses two, more horizontally oriented vent registers, again neither of which matches the other. A wide, but not especially deep glove box rests below a cabin-wide, clam shell-like notch dividing the upper and lower halves of the dash. There is no center stack to speak of tying together the dash and the drive tunnel. Below the climate control panel is a shallow storage bin with a power point and an audio input jack on the left side. Forward of the metallic-trimmed block of plastic serving as a base for the hand brake and shift levers is a good-sized, rectangular storage bin. Another, shallow cubby is tucked in between the shift lever housing and a pair of seat bottom-level cup holders under a sliding cover. Aft of this is an abbreviated, padded armrest covering another storage bin, inside of which is a second power point. Each door has a hard plastic map pocket. A magazine pouch is on the rear of the front passenger seatback. Architecturally busy interior door panels could be friendlier to fingers in terms of grips and pulls, but armrests provide good support at the right level. The trunk is fully finished, although Honda blew a perfect chance to make points with owners in slushy snowbelt states by neglecting to mold an inside pull-down into the lining under the trunk lid. A thoughtful touch is a spare tire well large enough to hold the full-size tire the compact spare will replace temporarily in the event of a flat. The 2006 Civic siblings are easily competitive with other cars in their classes when it comes to interior room. Oddly, however, despite adding more than three inches to the sedan's wheelbase (the distance between the front and rear tires) and more than in inch in overall length vis-a-vis the 2005, front seat leg room is the same and rear seat leg room is actually less, by more than in inch, in the 2006. Hip room does increase in the '06, however, by almost half an inch in front and by more than in inch in the rear. Almost oversize rear doors provide easy rear seat access. Cargo space, again oddly, drops by almost a cubic foot and trails the class leaders by a couple cubic feet; the Hybrid gives up another 1.6 cubic feet to battery and such. The coupes' wheelbase grows by more than an inch over the 2005, from 103.1 inches to 104.3, and loses about half an inch in overall length, to 174.8 from 175.4 inches, with much the same result for occupants. As in, there's about the same front seat leg room and less rear seat leg room, by almost three inches, but more hip room by around three inches front and rear. Fit and finish meet Honda st