I have had my 9th gen 1.6 i-DTEC for 7 weeks now and am very pleased.
I had a 2.2 i-CTDI ES before so there is a lot more kit on this one and it's also more refined, quieter and smoother.
The driving experience is definitely more leaned towards comfort driving than driving feel, it's a much easier car to drive but the steering lacks the feel on the 8th gen. My wife didn't enjoy driving my old Civic but it's a different story with this one.
The parking camera and all round parking sensors really do help out when getting into tight parking spaces.
The Sat Nav seems pretty good, though does seem to treat some mini roundabouts like they are not there, having it always there and having traffic info is really handy. The bluetooth streaming audio and USB interface are good, though bizarrely while my old ES stereo handled all the files in the root folder, for this one I have had to put them all in folders as there appears to be a 255 file per folder limit with this stereo.
Gear change is much slicker than the old Civic, the start stop works well too, clutch I have found is similar to the old one, no problems there.
Fuel economy as mentioned in another post is below what I had expected, am getting 60-63mpg on mixed driving routes, I reckon 70mpg is probably achievable on a motorway run but given Honda say 78.5mpg for mixed driving it's a little disappointing.
I have found the performance of the 1.6 to be above what I had expected, it feels as sprightly as our 1.6 petrol Astra (115bhp) on general town driving and definitely has more grunt for overtaking/motorway use.
One thing you can't do is pull off in 2nd, used to be able to do that with the 2.2....the 1.6 does not like it, it will do it but will grumble and barely accelerate, this is to be expected from the smaller engine I guess.
The leather seats are nice enough, the boot space is huge once again (though is 18 litres smaller than my old one, 10 litres of which is the subwoofer....which adds a bit of bass without vibrating the rear wiper off).
They have changed the wipes from the wipe to the edegs ones to the more traditional style, which is a shame....have also lost the panoramic glass roof and the start button....no major issues there really but the glass roof was nice in the summer.
The glove box has gotten a lot smaller, this is quite disappointing, though the door storage has improved particularly on the back doors.
The centre console bin now has a "gas lift" type operation, they must have seen the lifting of the old one to be just too much effort.
I haven't tried the video input or playing a DVD on it yet, seems crazy, but why not eh!
Took a little while to get used to putting the clutch down on starting, now I end up doing it in our Astra too, my wife instead gets in and presses the eco button expecting it to start like the old one ha ha.
I love the Aero alloys, I definitely prefer them over the standard ES/EX alloys.
I test drove the 2.2 and I thought it was good but didn't blow me away, it was similar to my old 2.2.....I do feel the lighter 1.6 engine has improved the handling quite a bit.
I don't think this engine has the same friction as a petrol, it's getting there, but you still know there is a diesel up front, it's noticeably quieter than the old 2.2 and worlds apart from the chugging 1.7 CTDI engine we had in our previous Corsa.
You can upload a wallpaper onto the upper screen, though it's a bit hit and miss, it's quite fussy even if you get the resolution right, good for a laugh though.
I find resetting the trip computer very painful compared to the previous model, you have to navigate around menus rather than just hold down a reset....since my trip computer lies about the mpg, giving me inflated figures so far, I am not monitoring it so much.
The climate controls are much better than the previous model, there is a straightforward on/off and it tells you which vent you have selected when it's off. On the old model I found that if you didn't want to use Auto, when you set it up and then turned it off you couldn't just turn it back on with those settings if you know what I mean.
You can also voice control the Climate Control with the usual world of voice control success....."Set Temperature 19 degrees" ...... Car replies "Set Temperature 26 degrees".
Am loving the new Benefit in Kind value as it's a company car, even though the value of the car is nearly £4k higher than my old one, thanks to it's 13% BIK value (old one is 22% in this tax year) I am paying about 25% less each month in tax on it.
If i think of any more noteworthy points will post them.
I had a 2.2 i-CTDI ES before so there is a lot more kit on this one and it's also more refined, quieter and smoother.
The driving experience is definitely more leaned towards comfort driving than driving feel, it's a much easier car to drive but the steering lacks the feel on the 8th gen. My wife didn't enjoy driving my old Civic but it's a different story with this one.
The parking camera and all round parking sensors really do help out when getting into tight parking spaces.
The Sat Nav seems pretty good, though does seem to treat some mini roundabouts like they are not there, having it always there and having traffic info is really handy. The bluetooth streaming audio and USB interface are good, though bizarrely while my old ES stereo handled all the files in the root folder, for this one I have had to put them all in folders as there appears to be a 255 file per folder limit with this stereo.
Gear change is much slicker than the old Civic, the start stop works well too, clutch I have found is similar to the old one, no problems there.
Fuel economy as mentioned in another post is below what I had expected, am getting 60-63mpg on mixed driving routes, I reckon 70mpg is probably achievable on a motorway run but given Honda say 78.5mpg for mixed driving it's a little disappointing.
I have found the performance of the 1.6 to be above what I had expected, it feels as sprightly as our 1.6 petrol Astra (115bhp) on general town driving and definitely has more grunt for overtaking/motorway use.
One thing you can't do is pull off in 2nd, used to be able to do that with the 2.2....the 1.6 does not like it, it will do it but will grumble and barely accelerate, this is to be expected from the smaller engine I guess.
The leather seats are nice enough, the boot space is huge once again (though is 18 litres smaller than my old one, 10 litres of which is the subwoofer....which adds a bit of bass without vibrating the rear wiper off).
They have changed the wipes from the wipe to the edegs ones to the more traditional style, which is a shame....have also lost the panoramic glass roof and the start button....no major issues there really but the glass roof was nice in the summer.
The glove box has gotten a lot smaller, this is quite disappointing, though the door storage has improved particularly on the back doors.
The centre console bin now has a "gas lift" type operation, they must have seen the lifting of the old one to be just too much effort.
I haven't tried the video input or playing a DVD on it yet, seems crazy, but why not eh!
Took a little while to get used to putting the clutch down on starting, now I end up doing it in our Astra too, my wife instead gets in and presses the eco button expecting it to start like the old one ha ha.
I love the Aero alloys, I definitely prefer them over the standard ES/EX alloys.
I test drove the 2.2 and I thought it was good but didn't blow me away, it was similar to my old 2.2.....I do feel the lighter 1.6 engine has improved the handling quite a bit.
I don't think this engine has the same friction as a petrol, it's getting there, but you still know there is a diesel up front, it's noticeably quieter than the old 2.2 and worlds apart from the chugging 1.7 CTDI engine we had in our previous Corsa.
You can upload a wallpaper onto the upper screen, though it's a bit hit and miss, it's quite fussy even if you get the resolution right, good for a laugh though.
I find resetting the trip computer very painful compared to the previous model, you have to navigate around menus rather than just hold down a reset....since my trip computer lies about the mpg, giving me inflated figures so far, I am not monitoring it so much.
The climate controls are much better than the previous model, there is a straightforward on/off and it tells you which vent you have selected when it's off. On the old model I found that if you didn't want to use Auto, when you set it up and then turned it off you couldn't just turn it back on with those settings if you know what I mean.
You can also voice control the Climate Control with the usual world of voice control success....."Set Temperature 19 degrees" ...... Car replies "Set Temperature 26 degrees".
Am loving the new Benefit in Kind value as it's a company car, even though the value of the car is nearly £4k higher than my old one, thanks to it's 13% BIK value (old one is 22% in this tax year) I am paying about 25% less each month in tax on it.
If i think of any more noteworthy points will post them.