2003 Honda Civic Minor Revision for Malaysia (and Asia)

The current generation 'ES'-Civic was launched in late 2000 in Japan and thereafter at various time in 2001 around the rest of the world. Traditionally, the Honda Civic has a 4 years life-span per generation with a rather consistent mid-life revision which occurs around 2-3 years after it's launch.

For the asian region outside of Japan, Honda Asia which is headquartered in Thailand with a Research & Development center in Ayyuthia quietly launched the mid-life revision for Asian countries outside of Japan at the end of last year. This revision was taken up individually and launched by various asian countries at various times this year. On August 13th 2003, it was Honda Malaysia's turn to launch this revision, in a lavish "New Honda Civic Market Launch Ceremony". I duly received an email from Honda Malaysia inviting me to to cover the launch for TOVA.

Though quite a number of asian countries had already launched the revision:- Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, to name a few, thankfully nowadays with Honda directly in charge, Malaysia no longer plays the last guy catching up for eventhough our launch here is 8 months later than Thailand. There are actually still some asian countries that have not yet launched the revision yet, for e.g. Hong Kong and China.

The Details

As the term minor revision would suggest, the 'new' Civic is basically the same car design-wise. It has undergone a minor face-lift (which in my opinion is quite over-due), changes to the interior, and most importantly some much overdued mechanical updates; all in all the addition of 20 new features and the use of 260 new parts. Let's take a look in order, at the exterior, the interior and then the most important for last, the mechanical updates.

The new grill and front bumper with 'integrated lower lip'

The re-designed rear-light 'cluster'

Exterior wise, the Civic remains mainly unchanged except for a new front bumper, front grill, side trimmings and rear light cluster. The front bumper is the most drastically redesigned part, with clear cutouts at the lower sides where Honda Malaysia fitted foglights as a standard accessory. The bumper also has a new bottom profile which visually looks like an integrated lower lip. Side skirts are now also fitted as a standard accessory. The result is the revised Civic looks as if it comes with a bodykit fitted as stock. All it needs would be a nice rear spoiler and rear lower lip to complete the package !

Front mudflaps with side skirt

An item which might be somewhat valuable to the enthusiast would be the mud-flaps - typically adding side skirts means sacrificing the front flaps as it will not accomodate the skirts. But Honda Malaysia went to some lengths to source for flaps which are compatible with the new side skirts. To me however, the most significant improvement visual-wise would be the front grill, which now has a chrome trimming surround with a colour-coded center. Visually this brings the revised Civic back to EK-like looks which to me is a much appreciated improvement. Colour wise, the revised Civic comes in 4 colour choices : Sunbeam Silver, Heather Mist, Signet Silver (which actually looks purplish) and Forest Jade.

Two-tone brown/biege interior

New Blue-toned meter cluster

For the interior, Honda focussed on adding many new niceties like driver's side vanity miror (no doubt recognising that the Civic is now very popular with ladies too), rear adjustable head rests, etc. The audio system is now fronted by a Kenwood head-unit with MP3 capability. The interior colour scheme has been changed from dark-grey to the two-tone biege/dark-brown combination used on the new City. One change important to enthusiasts would be the driver's side floor mat which now features dual slip-hooks (holes in the carpet which are hooked into studs mounted on the chassis floor). This prevents the carpet from being pushed forward to under the brake and throttle pedals by hard driving - a problem very annoying to enthusiasts. Another important change is the new intrument cluster which now features three dials, a large central speedometer flanked by two smaller dials, the tacho on the left and a combined water-temp/fuel-guage on the right. These dials are now illuminated by a blue background.

For a complete picture of the many new features on the revised Civic, as usual I strongly recommend readers to go check it out completely at the nearest friendly Honda dealer. I really think it'll be much more fun that way !

Rear disc brake at last !

Now on to the most important mechanical revisions. Much emphasis was made on the upgraded suspension of the revised Civic. According to Honda Malaysia, the suspension is totally different from the pre-revision Civic - apparently they tried to fit the Honda Access ES sports-suspension, sold as an option with the popular limited edition Civic RX, to the revised Civic and the mounting points are different ! The new suspension is designed to give the revised Civic further improved ride quality, helping to bring it ever closer to the much desirable ride quality of the 'continental' (European) marques. Wheel size remains at 195/60/15 and the rims in 4-lug PCD-100 format.

Rear Anti-Roll Bar for the Civic

Honda Malaysia also emphasizes that the chassis received significant strengthening which again helps in the ride quality and handling of the revised Civic. Most of the strengthening are towards the rear 1/3 of the car, with examples like the welding of an entire steel plate to the body area near the rear pillars.

When the ES-Civic was originally launched in Malaysia, two items which received well near 'violent' complaints from enthusiasts were the rear drum brakes and a general lack of important features like airbag and ABS; the previous Honda rep prefering to focus on options like lace covers ! When Honda took over, they quickly tried to rectify the situation. Later production runs of the pre-revision Civic actually already had ABS with EBD though SRS was still a chargeable option. Unfortunately these retrofits were done rather quietly so it was generally not well-known to the public. For this revision, Honda Malaysia made sure things are all in order. Just as with all their other new models, Honda Malaysia fitted this revised Civic with full options : dual-SRS, ABS with brake-assist and EBD as well. Now both front and rear are brake discs and Honda Malaysia also fitted both front and rear anti-roll bars to the Civic. As standard, the revised Civic comes with standard 3 years or 100,000km waranty and 2 years free service.

The 1.7l SOHC VTEC remains the top engine for most countries.

The Revised Civic around Asia

Before and after attending the press launch, I did some research on what other countries around asia did with the revised Civic. The comparison was very interesting; not all asian countries launched a 1.7l SOHC VTEC version and not all countries has a fully equipped Civic ! The comparison result shows how Honda addressed the different countries' specific market requirements using different specifications. Thankfully with Honda officially in charge, Malaysian Civics are now on-a-par in terms of specifications with those in other asian countries.

If we compare using the ES3 JDM Civic Ferio RS, this top JDM sedan version comes with the same 130ps 1.7l SOHC VTEC engine but with the excellent Multimatic transmission, EPS, front & rear anti-roll bars, front & rear brake discs. However, it has not been revised by Honda for the Japanese domestic market yet - the Civic Ferio RS remains exactly the same as when it was launched more than 2 years ago. And for the Thailand market, Honda Thailand launched a very mouth-watering 2.0l DOHC iVTEC version. Remember, while the asia region outside of Japan is controlled by Honda Asia from out of the Thailand-based headquarters, individual countries have the authority to decide the specifications of the Civic they launch for their domestic market - within some broad constraints imposed by Honda Asia HQ of course. The table below compares the ES-Civic variants amongst Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, using the JDM ES3 Civic Ferio RS as the 'reference standard' for comparison.

Honda Malaysia's Strategy : Taking Back the Market Share

Forest Jade colour

Signet Silver colour

Heather Mist colour

During the press conference, Honda Malaysia made known their bold plan - that with this revision to the Civic, they hope to take back as much of their lost market share as they can. In recent years, the Civic has been through a really bad patch. From a domineering position as the market leader for mid-sized sedans, it has since been overtaken not only by Toyota's Corolla-Altis but also by Nissan's Sentra. The reason for this has been debatted often but whatever is the final conclusion, with this revision to the current ES-Civc, Honda have targetted to more than double the number of Civics to be sold - from around 150 units/month to a new target of 300-350 units/month or 4,000 units a year. To acheive this very ambitious target, Honda Malaysia needs to package this revised Civic to be as broad in appeal as possible and it has clearly been done here. And while it is clear that although this round is a supposed to be a 'revision', Honda Malaysia also took advantage of it to effectively 'clean-up' whatever undesirable 'legacy' has been left on the pre-revision Civic. Thus the items which had required significant effort in homologations work and thus weren't possible to be fixed on the pre-revision Civic, e.g. the rear brakes, are now all properly taken care of in this revision. In the meantime, besides just adopting whatever standard revisions Honda Asia has supplied, Honda Malaysia has taken the extra step to add some nice touches wherever they can - e.g. the standard foglights and that Kenwood MP3/CD head-unit. This is really the only way to reach out to the largest market segment possible.

To enable a double-edged sword to this end, Honda Malaysia also announced a significant price drop for the revised Civic VTi-S - selling at RM109,900 which is almost 10,000 cheaper when compared to the previous model and with better features to boot ! While wrestling back the crown from the 1.8l version of the Toyota Altis may or may not prove acheiveable, it is clear that this new price point has been positioned to grab the Nissan Sentra by the throat as well as tackle at the very least the 1.6l version of the Toyota Altis head-on. Only the next few months will tell if Honda Malaysia has done enough though I for one am optimistic !

OK, so the revised Civic is targetted at the mass-market and for the broadest appeal. This is the only logical business choice of course - wrestling back market share will have to be the top priority given the relative disaster the Civic has gone through over the last 2-3 years. All businesses have to make a profit in order to be viable and without the proper sales volume to prove themselves, it is pointless to talk about anything else. Still, after all this has been said and done, what is left for us Civic enthusiasts ? Here I am really not sure of what the future might hold for the hardcore Civic fans. During the dark-days where the mass market has abandoned the Civic whole-sale, it was still mainly the diehard Civic fans who continued to believe in the model and who continued to support the Civic. In a way, they stuck with it through the bad patch and I will even dare write that it was mainly they who kept it alive ! If (when !) this revised Civic proves successful, surely the diehard Civic fans should be taken care of next. So, what is in store for the Civic in the future ? Of course I did ask about the K20A DOHC iVTEC Civic that Thailand is selling. That would indeed be a very mouth watering model for Civic enthusiasts. But understandbly, Honda Malaysia could not commit or comment on it other than they don't have any plans for it this year.

Nevertheless I remain optimisticly hopeful. Ever since the introduction of the limited edition Civic RX last year, I have since gotten confidence that Honda Malaysia have not forgotten us, their loyal fans. The addition of an obviously gimmickly 7-speed mode to the new City's CVT transmission, a feature only the true driving enthusiast will appreciate confirms that. So I am confidently looking forward to what Honda might have in store for Civic fans for the future, hopefully the near future.

Wong KN
August 2003
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