Thorns - first of all, congrats on passing
Civic as a first car.... Hmmm....
Personally, I wouldn't - but I'm going to make some sweeping generalisations to back that up, so please don't be offended as they are not aimed directly at you
Why Not:
Power. 140bhp, whilst not 'supercar' power, is a fair bit for an inexperianced driver. Yes, no one is forcing you to use all the power, but the Civ is very good at actually going faster than you think it is. My first car was an old Escort, which felt /sounded like it was doing 60 when it was actually doing 30. A good thing in a first car...
Size. I appreciate you want baggage room, but the Civ is actually quite big on the outside too. Which is not ideal if you don't have experience about judging gaps.
Visibility. Yes, the mirrors are great, and go a very long way towards making up for the lack of vision through the back window. Again, as an experienced driver this is therefore not an issue. As an inexperienced driver, with perhaps less traffic awareness, it could be.
It's a new car. At the end of the day, it's your money
But the statistics show that newly qualified drivers are more likely to crash their cars than drivers who have been qualified for a while. Driving an older car, if you **** a wing, you shrug it off. In a brand new one, well, it hurts more
But all this is
my opinion - my daughter is nearly of an age to start driving, and in theory I could buy my Civ at the end of it's lease, for her to have.
But even on a (then) 2 year old Civ, I won't be - she'll be getting probably something like a Corsa or something equally small