2020 Honda Civic Sport Touring Hatchback Reviewed - Good Enough?

For around $30,000 you can get the Hyundai Veloster N, which is a specialty vehicle that goes really fast around corners and is super fun to drive. Or for about the same amount of money you can get this, the 2020 Honda Civic Sport Touring Hatchback. Now I understand this isn't a normal cross shop. After all, you can get a Honda Civic Hatchback for just under $22,000. But once you start adding on features, it can climb all the way to $30,000. And for that kind of money, maybe you want to consider something, oh I don't know, a bit more interesting. Or maybe not. In this video we're going to take a look at the 2020 Honda Civic Hatchback. It's a mainstream option that checks a lot of the boxes for a fun and economical commuter car. If you haven't yet, please take a moment to subscribe to Driving Sports TV right here on YouTube. Next week is our first video featuring our long-term 2020 Subaru Outback Onyx XT. It is the car that you built. Be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss it. Now let's go for a drive. For the Honda Civic, the Sport Touring is the top end of the hatchback family. This one features a bunch of extras, including a 540-watt audio system, dual exhaust, paddle shifters, LED headlights, and 18-inch wheels. Price as you see it here, $29,780 including destination. In fact, it's so loaded, our car only came with one option. And that's the continuously variable transmission. Under the hood is a 1.5-liter turbocharged inline-four. This little mill puts out 180 horsepower and 162 pound-feet of torque. Like all Civic models, it powers the front wheels exclusively. EPA rates this setup at up to 35 miles to the gallon on the highway and 29 around town. If economy is more your thing, the base Civic LX is a much better choice, since it can get up to 40 miles to the gallon in exchange for six fewer horses and less aggressive styling. Is it worth it? Before you answer that, check out everything on this Sport Touring model. Trunk space is very good, with up to 22.6 cubic feet with the second row up. Under the floor is a spare with some tools. Fold the second row down for 46.2 cubic feet of cargo area, which is large for the class. Both the Hyundai Veloster and the Toyota Corolla hatchback have significantly less room. Passengers get a fold-down armrest and heated seats. I really like Honda's unique design language. Up front, that means a flying buttress-styled center console, multi-panel leather-trimmed sport seats, and a dash that integrates all the elements very nicely. The driver's armrest also holds lots of accessories with a clever sliding cup holder. Leather on all the key touch points is high quality and feels great. Of course, at this price point, you also get a sunroof and a push-button start. The gauge cluster is unique on the Honda, and that's not just for the sake of being unique. Instead, it's a total rethinking of what you need in a gauge cluster, and I rather like it. Of course, you can also look at additional details like turbo output, music, and a lot more. Getting comfortable for the drive is easy with the 8-way power adjustments on the driver's side, 4-way on the passenger. Of course, seat warmers are standard at this trim level. Safety gear includes auto high-beam LED headlights, Honda-sensing collision mitigation, lane-keep assist with adaptive cruise control, and the LaneWatch blind-spot warning system. Of course, it also has a backup camera. It is low-res, but it does the job. And it may not seem like so much of a big deal, but with Honda, we kinda need to point it out. Yes, the infotainment system actually includes a volume knob. You can integrate your mobile with HondaLink. This is Honda's telemetric suite that adds collision notifications, emergency calling, and some other features for an annual $89 fee after the free 12-month trial period. Plug in a mobile device for Android Auto or Apple CarPlay compatibility. One thing that always bugs me about the Hyundai systems is that they don't render reds properly. Honda's screen have more accurate colors. You can see that the End CarPlay button matches the phone perfectly. On Hyundai, yeah, it's far too orange. You know, it's sometimes the little things. If you don't want to connect your mobile device, you can still use the built-in navigation on the Honda, which is quick and easy to use. Now that we covered all the details, let's see how well Honda's mainstream commuter car does on the open road. A car like this is actually one of the most difficult cars to review, because you can't focus on special traits, because the fact is that there's really nothing particularly special about an individual feature on this vehicle. It doesn't have fancy adaptive suspension. It doesn't have laser-guided missiles. It doesn't have anything. Oh, it does have paddle shifters, so I can emulate gears with a CVT up to four and shift. Yeah, you know, it's there. It's about as much fun as anybody ever emulating gears on a CVT, which honestly, it's not. Okay, yeah, if you're going down mountain passes and you want to downshift, yeah, sure, paddle shifters. But in that regard, I would say that you could just as well just put it on the transmission selector. It doesn't need to be the super-sporty F1 style on the steering wheel. So it just kind of gets your hopes up, and then you're like, ooh, yay, squishy shifts. So excited. Under the hood is a 180 horsepower inline-four with a turbocharger. That means it's actually pretty quick when you lay the throttle down. Or if you want to be, you know, more economical, you can drive more delicately and you're looking at up to 35 miles to the gallon on the highway, which is really impressive. That is why so many people pick the Honda Civic as their commuting car. But is it quick, too? Let's find out. I've stopped completely. There are no drive modes on this vehicle other than Econ on or off. So I'm just going to lay in the throttle and see what it does. I am going to put the transmission into Sport. And three, two, one, go. Three... Let's see, 30, 40, 50, and 60. Actually, that was a little delay on the 60. You know, that's not too bad for a commuter car. I would actually say that's pretty reasonable. It's not a particularly quick car, even though, yeah, it's a turbo, it's 1.5 liters. That's not very big. That's smaller than a Coke bottle in terms of displacement. If you want to have some fun, you can actually get this with a manual transmission. It's one of the few cars that does still have that available, and I think that's really cool. Let's see how it does in the corners. Now the CVT does feel a little rubber bandy. Not as bad as the Nissan, not as good as the Subaru, but it's right in there. Because it's a CVT, you know, it has a certain function. Let's go dive into the corners, see what we got. Body roll is well controlled. I feel, actually, this is really good. Now it's hard for me to get super excited about a commuter car, even one like the Honda Civic, which is, of course, the granddaddy of the tuner car scene. It's because of that culture that I think I'm a little bit more particular about the Honda Civic. I mean, there's been some good Civics, there's been some bad Civics. This Civic is actually really quite good. This whole generation has been really quite phenomenal. And for 2020, they've sharpened up the looks just a little bit on the outside. You could say it's inherited some of the edginess that you find on the Type R Civic. But it didn't inherit the same motor. That one, you got to get a Type R. But you are going to spend a lot more money on a Type R. You're looking at least seven grand more over this. One thing they've done a really good job with is the suspension on this. It's a nice compromise between feeling kind of sporty, but also not beating you up. I mean, this is a suspension package that I could drive every day on the commute and feel totally good about. It has really good road feel, but it soaks up all the irregularities that you might encounter on a daily commute. The leather here is super nice. The seat leather is actually quite good, too, though it is not like high-grain leather. It's just entry-level leather. Now, the nav system, I'm still not a fan of this. It's super pokey. You hit something and you wait. Now, granted, they did add in a volume button, so that's good. It's the little things that'll get on your nerves when you drive on a car day after day after day after day. And I have to say that Honda's done a really good job of really streamlining this interior, so you have a lot of the essentials. Things really fall to hand nicely. There's not a lot of extra unnecessary things. You don't have different drive modes, because for a commuter car, yeah, you just don't really need that. The gauge cluster, I like their innovative look. It's a lot different than everybody else, and it's super easy to read, and I can switch between different modes. I can look at the turbo settings. I can look at my music. I can have my phone integration through the Bluetooth or through USB. And of course, it also supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. These are all very good things. Of course, any commuter car worth its salt is loaded with the latest in advanced safety tech. This one, it has the full chimichanga platter. You're looking at collision detection with pedestrian detection, lane detection. You have their innovative lane watch system, which I hit a button here, and I can see my blind spot over there. It even gives me little markers to tell me whether or not I'm going to clear the cyclists that are hugging me a little too close. And it also has adaptive cruise control. I'm going to go ahead and hit main to turn that on. I'm going to go ahead and hit my pace. I'm going to get behind the vehicle up here so we can see how this works. And I'm going to see if it actually stops all the way. Now, my foot is not on the gas or the brake, and we're coming up to this Corolla, and it is a complete stop. Now the question is, is when the light changes, what will the system do? Will it automatically move forward or will it prompt me to hit a button or do I have to start all over again? Let's see. Okay. Now the car is moving out ahead of me. I have to hit main again. Nope. Okay. Well, I boofed that up, but no, it won't automatically continue again. You have to do some kind of interaction with the buttons. So let's see how the adaptive cruise control works here. I'm going to hit main. I'm going to hit set. I'm going to go ahead and turn on lane detection. And I'm going to gap it with the shortest gap. And I'm going to increase my speed so that I'm going faster than they are. And we'll see how close we match there. No, it's not detecting lanes yet. I wonder if I'm not quite going fast enough because I'm right around 35. Yeah, not quite fast enough to reliably detect lanes. That's more of a freeway thing, but I can gap these guys just fine. And then, and actually kind of like this, this is about one car length, two car lengths behind them. And I can toggle to have a further gap if I want that. And then when the car leaves the zone, then it detects it. It takes a moment. It is a little slow on the uptake, but now it zips back up to my target speed because there's nobody in front of me. So it's not as smooth or as quick to respond as some other systems. But honestly, for a 30 grand car, I'm just really glad that it's even here. Both the Hyundai Veloster N and the Honda Civic Sport Touring are very different cars in actuality. The Honda is focused on comfort and safety, where the Veloster caches in all that safety tech in exchange for serious performance upgrades. If you gravitate one way or the other, be it performance or safety and comfort, the choice will be clear to pretty much any buyer. Of course, once you start expanding your view to other options in 30 grand range, it can become a little bit more of a muddle. Because for the same cash, you can also get a 2020 Volkswagen Golf GTI with 228 horsepower. So if I was personally going to drop cash on a front-drive hot hatch, my choice would still be the Veloster N, simply because it's the fastest of the bunch for the money. I'm Ryan Douthit for Driving Sports TV, thanks for watching. Which would you get? Post a comment below. Also, give this video a like and share it with your friends. I hope we see you again next week as we debut our new long-term Subaru Outback Onyx XT. We'll see you then. In fact, I gotta go film it right now.