2025 Honda Civic Hybrid Quick Review

Welcome to Extra Throttle House. I'm Tom. And I'm James. And this is a Honda Civic. This is a Honda Civic. It's the new Honda Civic Hybrid. I've been living with this and it is annoying. What? Why? Because it's so good. Oh, I see. It's one of those. It's one of those things where it's like, I don't need stuff. Like what's the point? It just does everything. Yeah, this is like if you already have plates. You don't need a new set of plates. You don't need a new set of plates. Like your plates are just, they hold the food that you eat it off of. It might not be exciting, but. We had the same sentiment about the Corolla All-wheel drive hybrid. Yes. So granted, this is an all-wheel drive. No. And we haven't had a hybrid Civic in a while. I think the Insight borrowed the name for a while of hybrid and then it came back as the Civic. Right. This is a front-wheel drive, naturally aspirated. Naturally aspirated with two electric motors in the front. So it's actually a speed demon. Is it? Yes, a Civic SI, which is the manual sports. Oh, you're not being, you're not making jokes. No. 200 horsepower like the Civic SI, except it has more, quite a bit more torque. Because instead of a 1.5 liter turbo, it has a 2 liter natural aspirated. What? Yeah. So it's, all they got to do is put a diff in this and some hotter suspension and you have a SI. Correct. 6.2 seconds to 60 this thing. CVT though. CVT. Right. CVT. It does some funky stuff. I'll talk about that on the Insight. Okay. Funky good stuff. Okay. I really only have good things to say about this. How much is it? Uh, this is the fully specced Sport Touring. So, uh, and I think the pearlescent white or whatever this is. Yeah. It's like $39 Canadian, $32 US. But you buy this and for 15 years, you're never going to complain. Yeah, exactly. Right. They've updated the front fascia a bit for this year. It's got enough trunk space. It isn't as, uh, uh, bottlenose dolphiny. Oh, really? It still has this top bit. I didn't even notice that. Yeah, it's not that different. Looks the same to me. It's not that different. Listen, it's not an exciting car. Okay. No. The same way a kettle is not an exciting kettle. But sometimes some kettles are great though, right? But this isn't one of the nice kettles. I think it could be one of the nice kettles. Oh, it's not a designer kettle. But you know what? I like finding an affordable car. Asterisk because I know 32 grand is not that cheap. Yeah, but this is the fully specced one. Okay. So you got fancy stuff. Yeah, it is a hybrid and I'm assuming it gets a really good fuel economy. Amazing fuel economy. Okay, 50 miles per gallon. I've been getting 4.5 liters of 100 kilometers in this which is absurdly good. Just over 52 miles per gallon. It's like Prius good, isn't it? Pretty much. Yeah, and it drives, well, no, the Prius drives really well. You take this for a little drive. Okay, I will. All right, here we go. Oh, nice EV torque, right? Yes. Oh, it's just instantly a nice car, isn't it? You hear that transmission? It's doing the thing. It's emulating the gears, but I think it actually does it quite nicely in this. Oh, this is a CVT. Yeah, that doesn't feel like a CVT. Yeah, slam on it. It does like a fake shift. Yeah. Which is not the first time the CVTs have done that, but I think it's when executed. It's so quiet. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Well, this is sport touring. So I think there's like extra resonators in the wheels. There's what's the sound deadening stuff with the stereo doing its thing. There's a little bit of road noise actually. Yeah, it's not it's not that quiet. I've seen a lot of reviews sort of say it's so quiet. It's not, it's fine. It's just not loud. It's economy car. It's economy car. It's an economy car. However, economy cars have come a long way. If you do a sport touring, you get wireless charger, bigger screen. Yeah. Automatic wipers. You know, you've got heated seats, heated steering wheel. Heated seats in the rear. Yes, but you don't have ventilated seats in the front, which is something that an Elantra does. No vented seats. See, that's an easy thing to make people go, ooh. Yeah, because my back's hot right now. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't mind it. Listen, I'll probably say this in other videos, but I want to say that I think that ventilated seats are one of the best car inventions in the last little while. Like of the modern age, that was I think the biggest step forward in physical comfort while sitting in a car. I agree. It just, it takes out that, almost takes, the heat equals stress and it takes out that stress. Yes, it's so important. So just driving this around, the mix between hybrid, the hybridization and the petrol engine is just really quite wonderful. You know, so you know what just happened right there? This is how I know this is a really good car. I completely stopped listening to you. I completely forgot what we were doing. I didn't realize we were in a car review and I was thinking, well, there's a little waterway down there. I looked at that person's front lawn. He did a really good job taking care of that as I put the turn signal on, came to a stop and turned right. Yes. I completely zoned out. It was like, I don't know, whatever. It's just a car. Boom. Nailed it. I'll try not to be insulted because what you've done is also experience what I said at the beginning, which is you drive it and you're like, god damn it. That's just, yeah. That's it. That's fine. You know, it's got everything you bloody need. You've got wireless charging, USB-C charging, physical buttons where you want them, a volume knob. I will say that there's a few things that are quirky. Like I don't love that the volume on the steering wheel is a clicker and then the thing below it is a scroller. That should be reversed. That should be reversed. Also, if you've got your heated seat on. No! You can't. Well, I can cancel by pressing auto climate. It turns it off. Oh. Why can't you have auto climate? And then if you turn it really hot, it's like, oh, he wants his heated seat on. Is it turned on? It didn't in that moment, but it has been doing it. Oh, interesting. I swear it has been doing it. But like, why can't I have a heated seat on and choose my temperature? I don't really understand. Yeah, that doesn't, that sounds, that feels like a, like a mistake. It turns it off. It turns it off. If you're a civic person, you know why. I'm prepared to be an idiot there. Yeah. But yeah, visibility is wonderful. Rear legroom is fantastic. The seats are comfortable. This is an electric, electric moving seat. That's not slow. No, it's not slow. No. 232 pound-feet of torque. This is, you know, I compared it to the Si, but if you compare it to the previous Sport Touring, which by the way, now all Sport Tourings are Civic, are hybrids. Right. It's got way more power. It's gained a couple hundred pounds, but who hasn't? You're not even in Sport. Oh, you are in Sport. I am. Doesn't even sound that bad. But no, yeah, the, that, I got absolutely no problem with that in terms of like a straight line drivetrain performance in an economy car. That's pretty much perfect. Steering's fantastic. Yeah, steering is really nice. Really, really intuitive where you point it. You know, like the, hmm. This week on Cars That Just Make Sense. The Cars That Just Make Sense, we have the Honda Civic. Yeah, it's just, nowadays, for some reason, a lot of manufacturers, they seem to forget the fundamentals and they try to put other stuff in there that incentivizes you to buy the car, whether it's some new technological feature or a cool design or a funky name or whatever the hell it is. Yeah, yeah. Honda very clearly understands that the most important thing is just making the car drive well. Because most people don't, you know, they might not have necessarily like the vocabulary, like, like you and I or any of these viewers that are watching might have to describe what they like and don't like about a car, but what they end up doing is they drive the car. I don't like that one. Why? I don't know. I just don't like it. This one you get and you like. You just like it. Yeah, it's damped so well. The ride is very nice. Like Toronto is a moon crater landing place. Yeah, and it's handled it perfectly. Nice travel, nice travel. Travel's wonderful. Very good. It's perfectly set up, this car. So then it makes me wonder because, so the reason I resent it, happily resent it if that's possible. Okay, yeah. Is the way I've been using this is no different to the way I've been using my Golf R and obviously it hasn't seen snow, but I can honestly around town it feels just as quick. Right. Yeah, it pulls away even smoother and quicker. The shifts, even though a CVT is not an animated sort of transmission, it works. It's smooth. Yeah. Like it, this for me is if you didn't want to spend or if you didn't live somewhere where the incentives are good enough for an EV and you just want an appliance that makes sense and you're maybe not ready for electric, it makes sense. This is the move. This is the move, yeah. However, now I think, okay, versus Corolla Hybrid which has an all-wheel drive, but the all-wheel drive is like a 40 horsepower motor in the back. So it's not like a true all-wheel drive system in the traditional sense. Right. This with good winter tires would get you through. For sure. It's the modern interior. Corolla's about to see a refresh, an update. Yeah. I don't know. If I was going to 4.5 liters per 100 kilometers. No, it's frigging crazy. Right. As stupid as it is to measure in liters per 100 kilometers, Canada. That's 53 miles per gallon or whatever I've been getting in this. Um, if this is one thing that I've never liked about the Civic and it's the same issue here, I think that piece of hard plastic is too close to my leg. Yeah. I'm a very normal sized person and that feels cramped. That's where this differs obviously from something like the Golf R, just even around towns, the interior material quality is Civic. It's fine. That feeling right as you pull away. Smooth, isn't it? Oh, it's perfect. You feel like an amazing driver. Yeah, yeah. It's so smooth. Yeah. Yeah, it's very easy to actuate and uh in sport mode, it's even more aggressive. I've been driving this in Econ. Right. And it's just. I don't need sport. Yeah, it doesn't feel slow in Econ. So obviously it dulls the throttle in Econ, but it does mean it's even smoother. The picture is car in city. I know, but go Econ, look. Car in country. In green fields. I'm pretty sure AI can generate a better image. That was a pretty crap image. That's like a pixelated bush. Yeah, it looks terrible. Yeah, the depth of field makes no sense. Why is that tire in focus? But that's not what that is. So here we are. We're here we are in the new Civic complaining about the depth of field of the Econ screen. We're trying to find stuff. Yeah, there really isn't much to complain about. When I press auto, it turns off here to see. Why, Honda have made a great car here and their hybrids are not necessarily cheap. When I drove the CR-V hybrid, I was annoyed because I liked that so much. CR-Vs and RAV4s are the beige death of the North American landscape. They really are. When I see them, I shrivel up and want to die. There's a reason why you see them everywhere. It's because you'll get into them and go like, oh, I like that car. I'm going to buy that one. It's not very expensive. Yeah, there's no theater going on here. Even though this works very quickly, it's quite simple. It doesn't look fancy. Good. No, that's what I mean. We got the Bose sound system, which is an upgrade on the Sport Touring, which is quite good. Yeah, USB-C's. Yeah. Okay, hold on a second. Let's be normal car consumers for a second here. We are normal car consumers. No, we are, but sometimes we're crap at this type of stuff. Is there a normal USB anywhere in this car? No. No, okay. But that is a normal USB. Is that a wireless charging pad? It's a wireless charger. All right. Is there a spot to put other stuff other than your phone in that wireless charging pad? What do you mean? A house? Yeah. Not really. Well, this is legions of storage. That's a huge amount of storage. That's pretty good. We've got two cup holders here. We've got big door pins here. What else do normal people care about? Cup holders. I think the car driving well, they care about. No, they do. Of course they do, but there's other stuff. Volume? No. Sunglasses holder. Sunglasses holder. Look at that. Honestly, that's an underrated thing in cars. That's a very, very useful thing to have, and not all cars have it, and I'm glad this does. I think people care how a Sport Touring hybrid handles the track. All right, here we go. Going into the first corner. Actually, you know what?