2025 Honda Civic Review: The Nicest Car You Probably Never Think About

Not so long ago, the Honda Civic ecosystem was diverse and sprawling. You could get hatches of three- and five-door flavours, saloons, coupes, estates, petrols, diesels, hybrids, slow ones and fast ones. The Civic’s habitat was teeming with life.

But over the last decade or so, that habitat has been decimated by regulatory pressure, changing market demands and people’s insatiable thirst for crossovers. With the recent extinction of the Type R in Europe, the last surviving species of Civic is this, a five-door hatch with a hybrid powertrain (Honda calls it the e:HEV, but that’s just some random letters, so we’ll call it the Civic Hybrid). Meanwhile, Honda’s UK best-seller is now the H-RV, a car you just had to Google to remind yourself what it looks like.

It’s a bit of a sad state of affairs for what was once such a ubiquitous nameplate, but on the plus side, this latest Civic – the car’s eleventh generation – is perhaps the sharpest it’s looked since the spaceship Mk8 of the mid-noughties. Its clean, unpretentiously handsome lines were kept fresh by a subtle but effective facelift earlier in 2025.

The powertrain’s quite a clever one, too. Sitting somewhere between a trad hybrid and a range extender EV, you can’t plug it in, but the electric motor is the main source of propulsion. The engine – a charmingly old-fashioned naturally aspirated 2.0-litre four-cylinder – mostly just kicks in when it needs to top the small battery up, and only drives the wheels under heavy loads, when the system can develop its peak of 181bhp. Peak torque, though, comes when the electric motor is working alone to deliver a healthy 232lb ft.

It’s basically the same system you get in the new Prelude, minus that car’s gearbox-aping S+ Shift system. The Prelude’s on the same chassis too, but borrows various sporty suspension bits from the Civic Type R (RIP). The standard Civic makes do with more workaday bits.

That’s not to say it’s totally far removed from what was one of the greatest hot hatches of all time. The Type R’s satisfying, slick control weights were some of its best features, and while you obviously can’t experience its glorious manual gearshift in the automatic Civic Hybrid, there’s the same pleasing, purposeful heft to the steering.

Its surprising weightiness is a bit of a change in a world where most ‘normal’ cars have twirly, overassisted racks, and it takes a bit of adapting to around town, but the tradeoff is a system that’s far more confidence-inspiring when clipping along a twisty road. It doesn’t exactly crackle with feedback, but its weight and directness help set the Civic apart from other common-or-garden hatches, and give you the impression that there’s a bit of that Type R DNA left in it.

It’s quick enough too, with Honda quoting 7.9 seconds for the 0-62mph run (the top speed is a less spritely but more irrelevant 112mph), and like lots of this new breed of smaller hybrids, the electric motor helps power arrive predictably and smoothly. Together with a solid, responsive brake pedal, composed ride and lack of body roll, it all makes the Civic enjoyable enough to drive – definitely not pulse-racing, but not dull either.

In spite of the meaty steering, it’s a nice thing around town too. Here, it will happily run on electricity most of the time, and when the engine kicks in, it does so smoothly and unobtrusively. It’s smooth and pliant over speed bumps and potholes, and massively efficient thanks to its sparing use of the petrol engine. The official combined MPG figure of 56 isn’t entirely out of the realms of possibility if you’re sensible.

The two biggest marks against it in this area are the petrol engine, which can get a bit coarse and unpleasant when it has to work hard, and the ADAS. The enormously overenthusiastic lane departure mitigation can be turned off, but only via a very convoluted process through the instrument display that has to be repeated each time you start the car, and there’s no way at all of silencing the speed limit bongs.

‘Ah,’ you’re thinking, ‘but the speed limit bongs are only a problem if you’re speeding, and that’s illegal’. You’re right, dear reader, and I’m sure that, like me, you’ve never ever gone 72mph along a quiet, clear, well-lit stretch of dual carriageway. The problem with all of these systems is that they work off cameras that read signs, and those cameras aren’t always that smart, sometimes misinterpreting other things as speed limits. This was probably a bigger problem in the Type R, but it’s still annoying.

The rest of the interior, though, offers much more to like. The materials and fit and finish are superb by family hatch standards – better than plenty of pricier cars from ostensibly posher brands – and you’re treated to plenty of physical controls that make operating it a breeze next to, say, a current VW Golf. 

A small but worthy touch that shows how much care’s been taken is the way the stalks that control air vent direction click satisfyingly into place to let you know they’re centralised. It’s nice little things like this that lots of companies seem to have forgotten about in the ruthless pursuit of savings.

Space is good too, although that’s partly because the Civic’s a deceptively large car these days – its wheelbase is only about 100mm shorter than a current BMW 3 Series. Because of the sloping roofline, though, things in the back can be a bit claustrophobic, especially as it only comes with dark interior upholstery.

Is there much else to dislike? Not really. It’s not the cheapest of hatchbacks around – pricing starts at £33,795, while our Sport test car, the middle of three trims, kicks off at £35,395. The usual hatchback standard bearer, the Golf, starts at £28,895, although to get similar levels of performance out of the VW, you’ll need the plug-in hybrid – a minimum of £36,485.

The Kia K4 might be a bit more of a relevant rival when it arrives in Britain in 2026, also occupying the chunkier end of the hatchback scale. Right now, that also undercuts the Honda, with even the more powerful 1.6 starting at £31,295. It’s a bit apples to oranges until the full hybrid version of the Kia arrives, though, which will likely land in a similar price bracket to the Honda.

Really, the Civic sort of occupies its own space at the moment. Its roominess and top-notch cabin take some of the sting out of the extra price, and it’s just very good at everything you ask of it. It makes it all the more of a shame that all those other species of Civic have been eradicated, but if anything shows that the badge is worth a conservation effort, it’s this.

The stats (Civic e:HEV Sport)

Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder hybrid, petrol

Gearbox: e-CVT

Power (bhp): 181

Torque (lb ft): 232

0-62mph: 7.9 seconds

Top speed: 112mph

Weight: 1462kg

Starting price: £35,395