In the 100-plus year-old history of the motoring press, countless cars have been panned. Their makers have reacted in one of three ways: they have either refuted the verdict, often trying to “punish” the offending reviewer, ignored it and went on with their business as if nothing happened or made improvements when the time came to revamp the car.
Honda got pretty upset about the press’ reaction to its 2012 U.S. market Civic to the extent that it gave it a makeover just in time for the 2013 model year. Introducing a significantly improved model 18 months later must be an industry first – but then again, reviews like the one published by Consumer Reports apparently were too much to bear, even if sales soared.
Barely a few days after the revised Civic made its debut at the LA Auto Show, Honda gave Consumer Reports a 2013 Sedan for a first drive. This goes to show that a. the Japanese company is confident that it has fixed the 2012 car’s shortcomings, and b. it’s eager to find out what they think about it.
Mind you, this is just a first drive in which CR’s engineer Tom Mutchler shares his initial impressions of the 2013 Civic with viewers. The definitive verdict will come a little later, after the publication has bought its own car, as it always does, and conduct a full test.
Still, you only have one chance to make a first impression. You can find out whether it was a positive or negative one in the video that follows the jump.
By Andrew Tsaousis
6 Comments:
We should give Honda a nickname, the "Turd Polisher".
There design has gotten horrible, they just need to fire there designers and start new.
As this article points out, Civic sales have remained strong even through all the bashing the press laid out. Could it be that the car has some real virtues to its owners that transcend all the whining? They're great cars!
US Civic is pure beauty, compared to Euro Civic :)
thanks for sharing..
I love my 2012 it's great they changed, now i have a limited edition. i saw a 2013 and only changes i see are rear appearances and the hood and the dash is now softer. but after having a piece of junk Dodge dash crumble i love my dash. Over 40k now and it has no problems. 34 mpg most of the time or more.
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