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These are the first official pictures of the facelifted Honda CR-V, which will go on sale in January 2010

The car will be available with Honda's 2.2-litre i-DTEC engine, which was launched in the Accord last year, for the first time. It produces 148bhp and 258lb ft of torque. It can also be mated to either a manual gearbox or a new, five-speed automatic unit.

See the Honda CR-V picture galler...Read the full article

Looks-wise Honda have proved that you can't polish a turd, though these pictures seem to suggest they have made it slightly less ugly by being slightly more boring - in this case a good thing.

 

By address the cabin refinement under full throttle and hopefully the road noise by fitting more sound deadening, the new diesel and the availability of the automatic this car should fly out of the showrooms. But it won't - which is a shame for Honda because even pre-facelift it was one of the best "soft off-roaders" you could buy.

Not much of a facelift. Still, nothing to put off the pensioner owner/drivers who have them either.

I wondered why it had suddenly got cheaper again on our company leasing site, they are flogging the current one at discount to keep production going as people tend to hang on for new models.

It was on my shortlist, pretty neck and neck with the Skoda Yeti, but with its bigger size in the Honda's favour. I am not ordering one if a better one is out in 3 months!

If they can get the CO2 below 160gkm like the Yeti it would brilliant, the Yeti with 4 wheel drive managed it, all the other softroaders below 160 are 2 wheel drive versions, employers are going crazy currently to get their drivers to pick sub 160gkm vehicles.

It may be boring but as a working vehicle that needs to cover the region day in, day out they have a lot going for them, roomy, easy access big boot, raised visibility, better seating posture and whilst they won't rescue a cow halfway up Snowdon they will keep you moving on snow or icy roads, get you down flooded lanes etc. I see a huge amount of them in use as paramedic response vehicles for these reasons.

A diesel automatic 4x4. sounds awful to me, but despite my thoughts and the iffy looks i suspect it will do very well.

Quite why Honda cant get the styling right is a mystery. Surely no one in their design department looked at this and said 'wow, we could never improve on that' When the look of a car is so important to its suscess a bit more effort on the looks would surely have it selling even better?

Diesel automatic 4x4 is perfect for a sizeable chunk of the population. Automatics are gaining in popularity, they generally work well with a diesel and a lot of people want a reasonably economical 4x4 which can cope with a gravel track and is easy to get in/out of.

I drive a 2007 CRV EX Auto(w/Aero bodykit and blaze alloys(improves the boring looks somewhat).  I went down to my local dealership to see what they've improved from the 2007 model, and unfortunately not a lot apart from the sound insulation, according to the salesman.  Plastics are made of same crappy cheap materials, and the salesman even demonstrated with his fingernail how easily it scratches.  Cost savings, he described!!!

I won't be buying this car again.

theonlydt:

Diesel automatic 4x4 is perfect for a sizeable chunk of the population. Automatics are gaining in popularity, they generally work well with a diesel and a lot of people want a reasonably economical 4x4 which can cope with a gravel track and is easy to get in/out of.

This one does n't seem that economical, prefer it to the Q5, but think I'd rather have a Yeti than either of them.

230SL:

This one does n't seem that economical

In the scheme of things its not. You can get a manual XC60 that does 50something mpg, but it's two wheel drive and a manual. Everything has to be relative. For a diesel, automatic 4x4 its reasonably economical, though it'd help if they had a DSG type box (hence why the Yeti is so economical, that and being smaller). Now, making things relative to one another, the petrol auto CRV does 34mpg and has about 100lbf less torque. The diesel auto is 43mpg, hence being "relatively economical". (Though road tax costs are the same for both models)

I was down at my local Honda dealer on Saturday looking at the Insight when I ventured over to look at two metallic white CRV's one was the brand new one while the other was the previous gen. Now I had an 09 CRV diesel on an 09 plate in a previous job which was fully loaded and apart from slightly different front and rear bumpers the rest including the interior was identical.

The new version had a sticker on it selling at £34k!!! When I got mine Honda were giving them away at £19k discounted from a list of £26k.