A well-rounded small saloon

Press, 3 December 1987, Page 51

A well-rounded small saloon

BEHIND the WHEEL with

Peter Greenslade

The recently launched 1.5-litre fuel-injected Honda Civic Si is the latest attempt to inject two-door GT excitement and performance into a bread-and-butter Japanese saloon.

Like the Mazda 323 Limited four-door hatchback, the Civic Si has been developed from the Civic GT hatchback and it has a target market of medium-to-high-income individuals with families or, more particularly, the Civic GT buyer who requires more room for the family. Ten years ago a cheque for $5OOO would have bought a Honda Civic and there would have been more than enough change left over for a slap-up dinner to mark the new acquisition. That Civic package was small —356 cm x 150 cm x 134 cm — and weighed a mere 680 kg. The Civic Si is larger — 414 cm x 163 cm x 138 cm —- weighs 830 kg and is much more powerful. It is also, not unexpectedly, much more expensive: $28,990 to be precise.

All the same, the Civic Si is a quite well-rounded small saloon, capable of coping with parents who have a family of three primary-school children and their baggage which, if well packed, should suffice for, say, a fortnight’s school holiday.

The Civic Si shares its PGM-F1 (programme fuel injection) 74 kW fourcylinder engine with the Civic GT. In its Civic sales brochure, NZMC, Ltd, the assembler and distributor of Honda, makes the point that although hardly anyone buys a Civic for racing, it’s comforting to know that it has proved in the Benson and Hedges endurance racing series that it can beat all others in its class.

That may be so, but I’m sure that a responsible individual with his wife and kids aboard really doesn’t want to go racing in a Civic Si. In fact, he and the family are likely to be more interested in the car’s velour upholstery and trim, central locking, power-operated windows, two-speaker Alpine audio system and so on, rather than the noise, smell and heat of a racing circuit.

Such an owner will probably consider the smart spoked alloy wheels, colour-coded bumpers and, more importantly, the ventilated front disc brakes and rear stabiliser bar sufficient to label this a sporty car. Moreover, although the husband might brag over a couple of Friday-night beers at the pub that his Civic Si is capable of 180km/h, that is a feature that won’t weigh heavily in favour of the Si when his wife drives the kids to school on Monday morning;

All the same, this is a sporty car and the motoring public might be curious to know how it goes. The short answer is, quite well. I must say that I found it an entertaining and peppy performer on the regular test circuit, although some quite hard driving revealed weaknesses in its character.

Although I don’t know for certain, I have a feeling that NZMC has set up the suspension rather harder than in its bread-and-butter Civics. On smooth surfaces this car is extremely well-be-haved, but when you get it 1 on a bit of rougher seal and maintain the same rate of progress, it is inclined to bounce around a bit.

There is a degree of compliance in the suspension, but certainly not enough to make one 101 l back in comfort when the driver is bordering upon being adventurous.

I’d need to spend some time with a bread-and-butter Civic to find out whether this stiffness is endemic. I hope it isn’t. It may be because the Si, seemingly, has power to burn that this flaw in its character surfaces. Certainly, there is plenty of performance available.

The fuel-injected engine develops 74 kW at 5750 r.p.m. and, perhaps more significantly 130 Nm of torque at 4500 r.p.m. Moreover, although I haven’t seen it, I’d hazard a guess that the torque curve is relatively flat, for this engine seems to deliver plenty of oomph irrespective of its rotational speed.

Therein lies the charm of the Civi Si; one does not have to rev the guts out of it to get it to deliver.

While it does not have the flexibility of an American VB, it does have characteristics along the lines of those exhibited by the typical Yank tank. Thus, one does not need the left hand hovering over the gear lever constantly to maintain a steady gait. That’s a boon for Mum on the school delivery run and for an impatient Dad overtaking slower traffic. Although the Si can be driven quite comfortably on the throttle, it becomes a little raver when the slick-shift gearbox is exploited, although one must always be wary of Honda’s notorious torque steer. In early front-wheel-drive cars the transference of power to the road surface made itself felt when the steering involuntarily unwound itself to the straight-ahead direction.

The ruthlessness with which this was accomplished was in a direct ratio to the amount of power, fed through the accelerator, to the front driving wheels. Since those days, engineers have been able to inhibit this undesirable characteristic using any number of techniques, but they all seem to have eluded Honda, which has eradicated torque steer by adopting power assistance for some of its more expensive models but, from a reading of the Civic sales literature, has not employed it on the Civic range.

However, with all that power available, the Si is rock steady in a straight line on a still day. The rack and pinion is excellent, most responsive and uncannily accurate at speed but as dead and heavy as suet pudding when manoeuvring in or out of a tight parking spot. Frankly, the heavy, lowspeed steering would turn me off the Si, if I happened to be in the market for such a car.

I’ve owned some cars with heavy steering in my day, but never one so small and so heavy in the steering as the Civic Si. To be perfectly honest, I believe that the Honda Motor Company got its priorities all wrong when it decided to become involved in four-wheel-steering when, patently, it had not resolved its conventional steering problems.

Unhappily, there are some Japanese manufacturers who seem to attach more weight to innovation or, more cruelly, gimmickry, than they do to chassis dynamics.

It is somewhat ironic to live in a country which very volubly promotes road safety, yet at the same time smiles benignly upon a car manufacturing country that sets more store by automotive fashion than quality.

It also seems fair to ask why automotive-fashion-conscious Japan should build such mechanically reliable cars and at the same time plan short-time obsolescence into them.

It is the reliability factor that goes in the Civic Si’s favour.

Also, dare it be said, the Si, judged by its size and performance, might be regarded as a cheaper substitute for the BMW

318, a car of similar size and performance, although hardly a real competitor in this particular field.

From the points of view of chassis dynamics and price the Civic Si and BMW 318 don’t brook comparison, but they are honest cars in their respective classes. Although the Civic has a long way to go to catch up with the BMW, it is reassuring to realise that in this day and age a medium-to-high-income individual with a family is catered for by what was once a pioneer in the motor industry and trade.