Honda Civic – Driving Test – From the Old Box

Honda introduced a contemporary car in 1991 with the fifth Civic, which, although mainly as a three-door, still largely resembled its predecessor. Well, ‘three-door’… Honda chose a pretty startling way of making your way up to the boot. The regular tailgate gave way to a two-part system, where you could open a flap and the rear window in opposite directions. We only knew such a thing from large off-road vehicles. The idea was that the rear of the Civic would be stronger, after all, the body was interrupted less violently than was the case with a tailgate. Incidentally, Honda came back to it with the sixth generation and a normal tailgate was added again.

What you obviously didn’t see about the Civic from the outside, but couldn’t be missed once you hit the road, was VTEC. That had just made its appearance in the fourth generation Civic at the last minute and was there from the start with this fifth generation. With this combination of variable valve timing and the use of different camshaft profiles, a modest four-cylinder suddenly became really strong. We drove exactly 30 years ago with both the Civic hatchback and the Civic Sedan as 1.6 ESi. Although we could have noticed it in the previous Civic, the VTEC technology remained impressive: “It has a lot of pulling power from 2,500 rpm, but at 5,300 rpm it really gets fun. It likes to run at 8,000 rpm and as at 8,500 rpm When the rev limiter kicks in, he seems to be only reluctantly resigning himself to it.” It also made the Civic really fast: 0 to 100 km/h was already done in 7 seconds and at 204 km/h the cake was finished.

In addition to the technology, Honda had clearly also thought carefully about how everything could be operated. The dashboard of the then brand new Civic looked modern and well-arranged. What was a downside in the brand new interior, were the chairs. Although they offered sufficient lateral support, we noticed that the backrests were a bit too short for European standards. However, that made up for the handling again. The fourth generation of the Civic already made an impression in that respect and Honda had managed to perfect it just a little further with the successor. “The previous Civic already had exemplary handling, but apparently it could still be better. That has now been proven with the latest generation.”

All in all, the Civic introduced 30 years ago left a very good first impression. It was roomier, bigger, drove even better than before and was nothing short of impressive in terms of performance. In the sales figures, this Civic would almost equal its predecessor in the Netherlands and that was a sign that Honda had again set a success number with it. In the first full year of sales, 6,362 were registered in the Netherlands. Nowadays this Civic is quite a rarity, not least because rust still played tricks on it and because of the potent engines quite a few copies fell prey to the more reckless and not very economical with them.