Short Preview : Honda Civic 2.0 i-VTEC

As marketing support for the launch of the new Civic 2.0 i-VTEC, Honda Malaysia held a special 'Civic 2.0l Media Test Drive' event at the seaside holiday resort of Avillion at Port Dickson. During the launch ceremony I made a special request to attend this event because of the importance of what I like to call the 'K20A Civic' to us enthusiasts. After a bit of anxious waiting, I was delighted to receive an email from Honda Malaysia inviting me to attend the event.

Because I had to arrive late for the event, I was put into the afternoon session of the test-drives. There were 3 cars for the session and each is shared by a group of 3 drivers. We are to take turns, each driving for part of the test-drive. Honda R&D had previously mapped out a special route for the test drive during the launch of the Honda City last year and the same route is to be used for this K20A Civic test drive. Starting and finishing at the Avillion resort, the route takes us into the outskirts of Seremban town and then through lots of twisty country roads and into the district of Sepang (where the famous Sepang F1 Circuit is located) and in fact through a twisty satellite road that rings around the SIC circuit itself and then more back roads and finally into the North South Highway and the new Seremban-Port Dicksion Highway before returning back to Avillion.

The group I was put into comprises YM the editor of a local automotive magazine and YS who writes for a local paoer. YS is also a former National Rally Champion. Whether by coincidence or by intention, I thought the arrangement was great for me and when our group was called to take our assigned car out, I quickly persuaded YS to take the wheel and thus be our first driver. Whenever I take an unfamiliar car for a performance test-drive, I always start with a lot of care, emphasizing safety first and thus driving way below the car's limit and only gradually going faster and faster to explore the performance limit. With only a short 2-3 hours test-drive and sharing the session with 2 other drivers, obviously I won't have time to do this. So my 'plan' was that with YS as the first driver, I would be able to at least get acquainted with the K20A Civic's performance limits safely because the driver is now a guy who used to earn a living power over-steering turbo-charged 4WD race-cars along dirt roads in the middle of nowhere ! Once YS agreed to take the wheel first, I gleefully took the rear seat because I also wanted a good vantage point of the instrument panel - the tacho and the speedo.

I wanted the middle stint of the test-drive because from the route map, that is when we are passing the Sepang district which I know has a good mixture of twisty country roads and also roads which are quite good conditions and should allow a bit of high-speed cruising. So when YM said he wanted to try the car in the highways proper, the arrangement was more or less perfect since he will have take the last stint of the route. Finally we had a bonus when YS said he knows the route by heart. The accumulated mileage of our car was around 400+km at the start of the test-drive.

Regular readers will know that my approach to evaluating the performance of a car is always made with considerations towards its design objectives and intended use. This means when I judge a vehicle's performance, I take into account whether it's a family sedan, an economy hatch, an SUV, and so forth. However, because of the briefness of the test-drive, I will not do so in this preview. So this preview will be all about my impressions of the performance of the K20A Civic and little or none about my judgements of the car. Those and more I will leave for the review proper which I am happy to say should be coming very soon after.

The Test-Drive as a Passenger

The test-drive first took us into the outskirts of Seremban town where we immediately got caught in a traffic jam ! The K20A Civic behaved exemplarily in such conditions; the leathered interior offering a plush comfortable environment and the automatic air-cond (i.e. 'climate control') and car's insulation were able to keep out the heat and noise from the outside. The Civic also worked smoothly in such slow, stop and go traffics and as we discussed and exchanged opinions inside the comfort of the car, the time spent crawling along the congested traffic did not seem annoying at all.

Soon enough we approached the junction where we had to make a tight left turn to get into the back roads to head for Sepang. Once we got onto the back roads, it was plenty of single laned twisty roads with moderate traffic. With 3 full adults in the car, overtaking was a breeze. I noticed that YS did not bothered to shift down into the 'D3' gate and just left the gearstick in the 'D' gate which is the full 5 speed mode. Overtaking of slower and even moderately fast moving traffic was accomplished with almost no drama. We never had to over-commit or take any risk. Such was the midrange oomph from the car that all we had to do was wait for a gap in the on-coming traffic, a quick squeeze of the throttle and the gearbox downshifts what seems to be 2 gears at a go, down from 5th to 3rd and the ample mid-range torque of the K20A coupled with the short final drive ratio allowed us to complete the overtaking with road to spare.

As the rear passenger, the softness of the rear suspension was very obvious. The back suspension is very 'lively' in the sense that it bounces quite a bit over uneven roads. When I checked out a unit at a dealer a few days later, I checked the front and back suspension, by pushing it down hard and let it rebound and visually the front is seemed quite a lot stiffer than the rear with the damping also is much stronger at the front too. This correlates well with my impression during the test-drive. Going fast on undulating roads, the back can bounce about quite significantly. When taking a corner at high speed on an uneven road, the effect is such that the back of the car sort of see-saws around the front suspensions as the pivot and from my vantage point, I can clearly feel the back tyres 'unloading'. As the back rebounds, the load on the rear tyres lightens and the tyre grip loosens. So when cornering at the limit, I could actually feel the rear skipping around mildly as the rear tyres unloads on the rebound and then loads back up as the rear goes down again. Indeed I actually felt that if the road undulations are bad enough, cornering at the limit might well cause the tail to come loose with the result that the car might even over-steer. But when the roads are even and flat, the Civic felt very composed and stable. From my vantage point at the rear seats, I could see that we were charging around the rather narrow and tight twisty back roads at speeds of up to 130kph, often cornering at 110kph and beyond during this time.

The normal behaviour of the Civic when cornering at the limit is actually mild understeer. When YM was took over the car for the final 'stint' the first thing he did was to throw the car hard into a tight corner. We went in with tyres squealing loudly and the Civic understeered lightly as we exited the corner. After that he proceeded to baby the car through the rest of the journey. This allowed us to sample the K20A Civic in light throttle, relaxed high speed cruising conditions and the Civic felt great, very comfortable, quiet and did its job effortlessly. In this sense, my impression was that from a rear passenger's point of view, the Civic is best enjoyed in easy cruising conditions and not when driven at its limits.

The Test-Drive as the Driver

As we reached the first checkpoint, a petrol station, it was my turn to take the wheels. From there onwards, we would enter into the Sepang district. The roads remained pretty much similar; countryside back roads, single-laned, and twisty. But after a short journey, we entered into quite deserted roads around the general vinicity of the Sepang F1 circuit. We strayed away from the Honda Malaysia 'approved' route here because we wanted to sneak out for a quick snack of durians ! Nevertheless, I had plenty of chances to test the cornering and high speed capabilities of the K20A Civic.

My first impression upon taking the wheels is that the K20A Civic seems to be designed to be more of a driver's car when driven hard. The road conditions were the same. Twisty and very uneven, with lots of undulations. I was taking corners at only a little bit lower speeds than YS was previously doing. But the Civic felt very stable and comfortable at those speeds from the driver's seat. I could feel the road was uneven and undulating and the back of the car 'lively' but from the driver's seat, the road imperfections seemed to be milder and the rear's liveliness nowhere near as alarming. So I quickly ended up taking corners at speeds of around 100kph and above and it never felt like I was pushing the car anywhere near it's limits ! Meanwhile YS was in the back seats and complaining that the rear was extremely lively, bouncing around and very uncomfortable !

Very high speed cornering was very nice on the Civic. On one of the main roads besides the SIC, I took a couple of corners - a very wide left hander followed by an equally wide right hand turn - at a very high speed. The car felt very stable but the tyres started to squeal softly. It was then that I noticed that the speedo was reading nearly 160kph ! A simple adjustment of the throttle and steering wheel was enough to bring back silence to the tyres.

Being the more impatient fellow, I was driving in 'D3' most of the time. From the driver's point of view, overtaking on the K20A Civic is quite good though for an absolute enthusiast's requirement, a little bit of planning and work is needed. The throttle needs to be 'kick-downed' just a little bit before the actual overtaking move so that the gearbox is in the right gear, usually 2nd, before swerving out to do the actual overtaking itself. Overtaking is reasonably prompt. At low speeds, the characteristic of the 1.7l VTEC version, i.e. dropping to 1st and a wild engine roar before an upshift to 2nd and relative quiet, still applies on the K20A Civic. However, the engine sound is so much better now - DOHC iVTEC and short intake runners allows the K20A to 'sing' instead of groan.

The K20A Civic's 5AT is equipped with GLC and so is 'intelligent' in a way, supposed to predict road conditions and pre-shifting into the correct gear. Nevertheless, I still managed to catch the Civic's gearbox off balance. This particular situation occured when we were entering into a long stretch of road which first started out as level but gradually increases its incline up-hill. With the throttle opening at a very light position, we cruised into the stretch and as the incline starts to increase upwards, I slowly increased pressure on the throttle, expecting the gearbox to downshift when it becomes appropriate. Unfortunately the gearbox did not and eventually the Civic started to struggle a bit in 4th gear under the load of 3 full sized adults, even when I had the throttle fully mashed against the floor. In that condition, lifting the throttle briefly and quickly ramming it back down against the floor would have produce the desired down-shift but still this was one situation where the 5AT's GLC logic was caught wrong-footed.

A Quick Performance Check

When Honda Malaysia launched this K20A Civic, they really emphasized it's sporty orientation. It is crucial of course since mostly enthusiasts who puts a premium on performance will be willing to pay the premium in price for the K20A Civic. On a totally wonderful change from the norm, Honda Malaysia actually announced some performance figures for this K20A Civic in its product presentations, quoting a 0-100kph or 0-63mph standing start time of 9.6 seconds . Now, I have performance tested the 1.7l SOHC VTEC Civic and that already returned a 0-60mph time of 9.7 seconds so my impression of the 9.6s figure for the K20A Civic's 100kph or 63mph dash is that it is way too pessimistic.

I had my GTECH Pro with me when I got into the car for the test-drive. With one a seasoned reviewer and the other an ex national rally champion, what do you think we would do ? Of course ! YS directed me to a few nice roads which he felt will allow us to do at least some simple 0-60mph runs. We eventually found one near the Sepang F1 Circuit. With three full sized adults in the car and the fuel tank at 80% full, I managed to put in 3 runs. One however was blotched but 2 of them returned reasonably accurate results.

Firstly under such a relatively full load, even the K20A engine does not produce enough low-end torque to spin the tyres when taking-off in gear. With the gearbox in 'D3' and the left foot holding the brake pedal, I tried to pre-tension the gearbox by applying light to moderately-light throttle but the tyres still did not squeal upon launching. Nevertheless the K20A Civic launched reasonably well as in there was no feeling of the engine bogging or struggling but without any squeal from the tyres, I know it wasn't going to be a record-breaking run. Acceleration in 1st gear was quite OK considering the heavy load the car was carrying but once 2nd was engaged, the sense of pickup dulled quite significantly. Eventually the 2 good runs returned times of 10.05 seconds and 9.92 seconds for the 0-60mph dash. Compared to the 'official' time supplied by Honda Malaysia, this seems to correlate well with a time of 9.6 seconds for the 0-100kph or 0-63mph run. So in a sense I was surprised at the good correlation but also a bit dissapointed that the K20A Civic was really that 'slow'. But we need to bear in mind that the runs were conducted with a very heavy load in the car and the mileage was below 500km. As a result, I remain optimistic for more 'spectecular' results when I have the K20A Civic for a proper review loan.

As an indication of how enthusiastic the Honda Malaysia marketing team is, we actually had plans to sneak out later that night to do a number of proper runs again. This time we were planning to do it with 1 passenger and hopefully a lighter fuel load. Unfortunately the skys opened up in the evening and rain forced us to cancel our plans.

Conclusion

I hope this preview provides readers with some useful insights into the performance abilities of the Civic 2.0 i-VTEC. During the Q&A session after the test drive I told Honda Malaysia that I honestly felt that the K20A Civic, on a like-to-like basis, i.e. comparing auto to auto, is superior to the EG9/EK4 Civic Ferio SiR/Si and I will stand by this opinion. I look forward to the proper loan of the car in the near future where I hope to do it proper justice in the timed performance tests. Stayed tuned !

Wong KN
June 2004
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