Small wonder: 50 years of the Honda Civic

It made its debut in 1972, and since then 24 million examples have been built and sold around the world. Unlike the famously long-lived Model T Ford or Volkswagen Beetle, there have been many changes in that time – so many, in fact, that today’s Civic is almost unrecognisable from the one which came on the scene half a century ago. And it’s super-successful: it was the 10th best-selling vehicle in the US in 2021, and the second-best selling one if you exclude pickups and SUVs. The model also propelled Honda to become a truly global car company.

Here is the story of one of Japan’s, and indeed the world’s, most famous and popular cars.

The original Civic can be fully understood only by looking at what came immediately before it. The Honda 1300, launched in 1969, was the company’s largest car up to that point, and a personal favourite of company founder Soichiro Honda (1906-1991), who insisted that it should have an air-cooled engine.

The problem was that it sold very badly. Honda’s engineers realised that something quite different was required, and that they would have to find ways of persuading the boss that they were right.

The engineers got their way, with the grudging approval of Mr Honda, and the first Civic was indeed radically different from the 1300. Powered initially by a new 1.2-litre engine, it was bang up to date for 1972, with a two-box fastback-style body, front-wheel drive and all-round independent suspension.

While the 1300 had only ever been sold in Japan and surrounding countries, the Civic was immediately successful much further afield, including Europe and North America, helped by a rapidly increasing demand for economical cars. By the end of 1975, global sales had already exceeded 200,000 units.

During its seven-year life cycle, the original Civic was gradually modified in several ways.

There were minor styling changes, an estate variant was added to the range, and the little engine was eventually taken out to 1.5 litres.

The second Civic arrived in 1979. It resembled the first in many ways, but it was larger and had more angular styling, reflecting a change in car design during the decade.

For the first time, Honda created a three-box, four-door saloon, which became known as the Ballade. A very similar model was sold in the UK – amid some controversy - as the Triumph Acclaim.

Just four years after launching the second Civic, Honda replaced it with a third. Looking completely different from its predecessors, it was available as both a sharply-styled hatchback and a more restrained saloon.

Two other derivatives were given different names. The CRX combined the Civic’s mechanicals with a much sportier coupe body, while the Shuttle (also known as the Wagon or Wagovan) was a tall five-door estate available with either front- or four-wheel drive.

Another Civic made its debut in 1987. Larger than before, and with revised suspension, it was once again available in saloon and hatchback form, and with CRX and Shuttle/Wagon derivatives.

This was the first generation of Civic to benefit from Honda’s VTEC variable valve timing and lift engine technology. By bringing different camshaft lobes into play, the same engine could be optimised either for power or for economy depending on how the driver used it.

After another four years, the next Civic was launched in 1991. The styling was similar to that of its immediate predecessor, but the edges were rounder, showing an increased interest in aerodynamics.

Hatchback and saloon body shapes were joined by a two-door coupe which retained the Civic name. The new CRX, still closely related to the Civic, was a sporter model with a targa top, and was known as the Del Sol.

The sixth Civic was the last sold entirely in the 20th century. There were now more body styles than before, namely two-door coupe, three- and five-door hatchback, four-door saloon (pictured) and an estate known as the Aerodeck, a name previously used for a similar version of the larger Honda Accord.

A new development for this generation was a CVT (continuously variable transmission). More conventional manual and automatic gearboxes were also available.

Honda’s Type R badge denotes the most powerful version in any model range. It was first used for the Civic in 1997. To western readers, that may seem surprisingly early, but that’s because this particular car was only ever sold officially in Japan.

Its engine was a destroked version of a 1.8-litre unit which had already appeared in other models. With the help of VTEC technology, it could rev to a spectacular 9000rpm, and produced over 180bhp from just 1.6 litres.

The first Civic of the new century was larger in every dimension than the previous one, with a corresponding - and useful - increase in interior space. The available body styles were now saloon, coupe and hatchback, with no estate derivative.

During this generation, Civic sales hit 16 million. Nearly half of these had been in North America, where the model was the third best-selling passenger car and seventh most popular vehicle overall in 2004. Honda claimed at the time that if Civic were a stand-alone brand, it would rank 13th in the region.

While the original Type R was exclusive to Japan, the next wasn’t even built there. Every example was in fact manufactured at Honda’s plant in Swindon, England,  and several were exported from there to the home country.

Type Rs sold in Europe were now fitted with a 2.0-litre VTEC engine producing around 200bhp. The Japanese version was even more powerful, at 212bhp, and featured shorter gearing and a limited slip differential.

Customers who liked the idea of a Civic hot hatch but couldn’t afford a Type R had the option during the seventh generation of buying a Type S instead. Sold only as a five-door hatch (the R was always a three-door at this point), it looked similar to the less powerful models, but its engine packed quite a punch.

It was a 2.0-litre unit producing just short of 157bhp – a very impressive figure for the day. Straightline acceleration was correspondingly impressive, though there was criticism that the handling lagged well behind.

Honda brought its Integrated Motor Assist petrol-electric hybrid system to market with the Insight in 1997, but did not use it in a mainstream car until 2003. In that year, it launched a car known variously as the Civic Hybrid or IMA, which combined a 1.3-litre engine (not used in any other Civic but familiar from the smaller Jazz) and an electric motor. Official fuel economy was impressive, though that was in no small part due to the car’s sensationally high gearing.

It was only ever available as a saloon, which took a baseball to the kneecaps of its sales potential in the UK. It was priced here at what was then considered the very high sum of £14,995 (approximately £23,000 today), though it was eligible for a £1000 Powershift subsidy, and owners didn’t have to pay the London congestion charge.

Honda refused to have anything to do with diesel engines before being forced into reversing this policy by customer demand in Europe. The first diesel Civic finally appeared in 2003, 31 years into the history of the nameplate.

Honda had a diesel engine in development, but it wasn’t ready yet. Instead, the Civic was fitted with a 1.7-litre unit co-designed by Isuzu and General Motors, built in Poland and used in several Opel and Vauxhall models.

In the early days, a Civic sold in one country was more or less the same as a Civic sold in any other. By 2005, that had changed completely.

Broadly speaking, Swindon built three- and five-door hatchbacks intended for European markets, while saloons and coupes were sold everywhere else. It wasn’t quite that simple, though. Deliberate leakage within this policy meant that Civics of any type might be sold in a particular country.

Honda had come in for some criticism in previous years for making the Civic look bland. This certainly didn’t apply to the concept car displayed at the 2005 Geneva Show, whose aggressive appearance verged on the shocking. That look was hardly toned down at all for the version which went into production a few months later.

“Your granny wouldn’t like it,” we said at the time, and then quoted the company’s then UK marketing director as saying, “If this doesn’t improve the image of Honda, I give in.”

By now it was inevitable that a Type R version of the new Civic would come along sooner or later. In fact, there were two. Japan got its own four-door saloon, while the Swindon plant built a three-door hatch for other markets.

These models used slightly different versions of the same high-revving 2.0-litre VTEC engine. The Japanese one was more powerful, but the European car’s output of around 200bhp still made it a seriously quick hot hatch.

The 2011 Civic retained its predecessor’s radical styling, which had proved to be very popular. Once again, the range was split into European hatchbacks on the one hand and saloons and coupes intended for other markets on the other.

The introduction of the hatchback, which had always been scheduled to arrive after the other models, was delayed by a massive earthquake in Japan and flooding in Thailand, where the car’s microchips were made. In the circumstances, Honda did extremely well to have the car on sale only a few weeks later than planned.

In 2014, Honda launched an estate version of the ninth Civic, which was marketed as the Tourer. At 624 litres, its load capacity up to the top of the rear seats was an impressive improvement over the hatchback’s already competitive 477 litres, though this included an underfloor compartment in which it was impossible to store a spare wheel.

To account for the possibility of a heavy load, a medium load or no load at all, the Tourer had three-way driver-selectable damping for the rear suspension. The front suspension was not adjustable, because in a car like this there was no need for it to be.

Honda completely rethought its approach to the Civic Type R for the model launched in 2015. The engine was from the same family as before, but for the first time it was now turbocharged.

High revs were a thing of the past (the turbo unit was out of steam at 7000rpm, where the previous naturally-aspirated engines were ready for a lot more), but power went up by around 50 percent to 306bhp, making this the highest-performing Civic to date by a long way.

Honda was the dominant brand in the British Touring Car Championship in the early 2010s, winning two Drivers’ and four Manufacturer’s and Teams’ titles in the space of just four seasons with Civic hatchbacks.

In 2014, it used a Tourer, the first estate seen in the BTCC for two decades. There was optimistic pre-season talk despite the aerodynamic disadvantage of an estate compared with its saloon and hatchback rivals, but while the car won a few races it was not a serious championship contender. Honda reverted to the body style after a single season.

After the slightly unfortunate Tourer episode, Honda returned to its winning ways in the British Touring Car Championship.

There were to be no more Team’s titles, and only one for Manufacturers, but Gordon Shedden (born 1979) was the top driver in both 2015 and 2016, raising his total number of championships to three.

Civics have also competed in the World Touring Car Championship, which ran from 2005 to 2017, and its successor, the World Touring Car Cup, though with less success than in the UK.

Other than the Manufacturers’ crown in the 2013 WTCC, there have been no titles, but the Civics have racked up 40 race wins to date, an average of just over two per season.

The Civic’s success in motorsport has by no means been confined to circuit racing. In 2016, a Type R competing on the closed-road course at Craigantlet just outside Belfast became the first completely standard production car to score points in the then 69-year history of the British Hillclimb Championship.

At the time of writing, the feat has been repeated only once since (also at Craigantlet) by a Lexus RC F, which was significantly slower.

For the first time in years, the Civic became a single model for all markets in 2015, with no major differences other than body style between those sold in any two countries. The same platform was used for a saloon, a hatchback and a coupe, all of which were longer and lower than the previous models and featured sophisticated multi-link rear suspension.

One of the available engines was a 1.0-litre petrol turbo. This unit was even smaller than the one fitted to the original Civic, but its 127bhp power output would have been considered remarkable for a race car engine of this size back in 1972, and nothing less than science fiction for a road-going one.

The next Type R was introduced in 2017. Based on the current Civic hatchback, it had the same turbocharged 2.0-litre engine as the previous model, but maximum power had been increased slightly to 316bhp.

In April of the same year, a Type R set a new record of 7 minutes 43.8 seconds for production front-wheel drive cars at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. The car ran on non-standard but road-legal tyres and was fitted with a rollcage, whose weight was compensated for by removing the rear seats and infotainment system.

The eleventh and latest Civic arrived in 2021, and is available as a saloon or a hatchback. Coupe and estate versions are now things of the past.

The most common engine is a 1.5-litre petrol turbo, though there is also a naturally-aspirated 2.0-litre in the range. Given the recent collapse in the popularity of diesel engines, it should come as no surprise that Honda has returned to its long-ago policy of not offering a diesel Civic.

Of course there’s a Type R in the current range, or at least there soon will be. According to Honda, one example has been done a lap of the Suzuka circuit, long-time home of the Japanese Grand Prix, in 2 minutes 23.120 seconds. This is reportedly a new record for a front-wheel drive productions cars, and 0.873 seconds less than the time achieved in 2021 by a Type R Limited Edition.

Honda has been producing hybrid Civics ever since the IMA of 2003. The latest is the e:HEV, which is due to go on sale in the UK in autumn 2022.

Conventionally-produced power comes from a 2.0-litre petrol engine which is backed up by two electric motors. The total system output is just over 180bhp, and the official fuel economy rating is around 60mpg.