Honda Civic 2023 e:HEV First Drive: The All-Around Hybrid

The Civic is the car that made Honda in America. It wasn&just the fact the Civic was a perky, reliable, well equipped, front-drive hatchback that made contemporary early &sub-compacts from Detroit look like cynically engineered junk. No, it was the fact Honda&innovative CVCC engine under the hood was the first to meet the 1975 U.S. emissions standard without the need for a fuel-sucking, power-sapping catalytic converter. Honda gave American Civics the best powertrain it had at the time, and it subsequently reaped the benefits. A lot has changed in the half-century since the Civic made its debut on the world stage, and the Civic, now in its 11th generation, has changed with it. Like the 1975 Civic CVCC, the 2023 Sport Touring Hatchback has a 1.5-liter four-banger under the hood. This one&turbocharged, however, and makes 3.4 times the power and 2.6 times the torque of that CVCC engine, with its 53 hp and 68 lb-ft. So, despite being 20 percent longer and wider and 76 percent heavier, the Sport Touring Hatchback takes less than half the time—7.7 seconds versus 15.6 seconds—to sprint to 60 mph. The Civic CVCC made headlines in 1975 with its EPA ratings of 28 mpg city and 42 mpg highway. The Sport Touring Hatchback&31 mpg city and 39 mpg highway numbers suggest Honda doesn&today pay quite as much attention to fuel efficiency as it used to. But maybe that&because we&looking at the wrong Civic. We should probably be turning our gaze instead to the new Civic e:HEV hatchback, which is...