29 Jan 07
My mum only recently replaced her P-reg Civic with a Toyota Corolla - she has a penchant for bombproof Japanese hatchbacks - and was always full of praise for Honda's after-sales service. Praise that rung true during my first (and hopefully last) trip to the dealer.
They managed to get the replacement part and slot me in within three working days of my phone call. And after arriving at the door I was immediately presented with a seat, a decent cup of coffee and a pile of car magazines. The job took less than an hour, too, and the staff proved friendly despite evidently being busy. Top marks.
My doppelganger and I aren't the only Civic owners in the street. My flatmate drives a turquoise P-reg model - probably the most stylish and best known of the older Civic designs. Just look at the photo I took of the two of them together: the 90s car is tiny, like a seal squaring up to a shark. The bonnet is particularly low in comparison to the 2006 model, but then car designers didn't have things like pedestrian impact to worry about back then. The expansion of the modern family car's waistline has as much to do with legislation as interior space.
The traditional Christmas slump has meant that the Honda has been parked up for longer than usual of late. But it's also given me a chance to really get to grips with the five-door hatchback's front-drive chassis. It's not often that you're presented with a 200-mile stretch of empty (largely unpoliced) road, as I was during the drive down to my parents' place late on Christmas day.
How did it fare? Pretty well. The car has no real vices, cornering sharply and maintaining good grip even on wet surfaces. It will understeer when provoked, and there isn't much in the way of steering feel. But unless you're really going banzai you're unlikely to find the handling wanting. Safe, solid and predictable is the name of the Civic's game.
