BabyDrive Verdict
Learning to drive in the UK in the 90s, the Honda Civic was a new and sporty little car that the cool kids had! When I found out they still existed I was eager to see if 20 years later it was still the sporty little car I remember and, most importantly, if it is any good as a BabyDrive!
The latest Honda Civic did not look like the hatchback I was expecting! It seemed too long and I thought we’d been given the Sedan! It did have that Honda styling I remember, spoilers, angles and honeycomb grill.
Nostalgia wasn’t enough though, by day four I nearly stopped using the Honda Civic press car as I just could not get my daughter into her rear facing child seat without contorting her into such a position I was worried I would do her some long-term back damage! The combination of the seat positioning, the shallow door opening and low roofline, meant I had to fold Tulsi in two and shove her into her child seat through a very small gap. Every time it would take at least two or three attempts to post her in and if I got the angle wrong or I had her contorting in the slightly wrong position, it was all over! I would have to comfort her, calm her down and then try again a few minutes later. I think it was a little mentally scaring for her to say the least! Not something you want to do to a child that is already not keen on going in the car!!
The same design details from the exterior followed through to the interior too in its angles, styling and aesthetics. Once I'd shoehorned Bub into her seat, the Civic was a well thought out space to drive in.
Similarly, a lot of design had gone into the technology features in this car. The Civic felt like it was bursting with gadgets and technology so if you are someone who wants all the safety alarms and warnings then you will LOVE the Honda Civic! For it not only gives you the usual sirens and bells but it also makes Big Brother style announcements!!
I was never too sure when an announcement might happen as I had a couple of surprises through the week! I had one about taking the handbrake off, another instructed me to ‘Fasten Drivers Seatbelt’ in a loud female voice, when I undid my driver's seatbelt. The announcements were loud and I could not find a way to turn their volume down. I have to say I was a little surprised by them on both occasions and found they disrupted Tulsi while she was sleeping.
The Civic had Apple CarPlay which was great because the in-car system was very confusing. The media system used an impenetrable list format that didn’t seem to have any consistency on each screen. I think only the programmer would know where all the function adjustments were located! There were fixed touch buttons down the right edge of the 7” touchscreen, which I found sometimes didn’t work and I had to press them repeatedly to get them to function.
More often than not if I am going out with Tulsi to Day Care for example, her dad will come out to the car with us. He will fasten her in to her child seat while I load the inevitable bags and stuff!!
I’ll hop into the drivers seat and turn the air-con or heating on depending on the time of year. I usually don’t put my seatbelt on straight away as I know I’ll have a few minutes to wait! In the Civic it repeatedly ‘dongs’ at you rather loudly and annoyingly when you turn the engine on, until you fasten your seatbelt. Interestingly though if I started to reverse and then undid my seatbelt the alarm did not sound?
When a rear passenger undid their seatbelt whilst the car was driving along a warning light flashed on the driver's digital display until quite a while after it was re-fastened.
One of my favourite tech features about the Civic was it’s left indicator camera. I'd never had this on any other car but found it really useful especially for changing lanes on the motorway, so I could see in my blind spot, and it was great for reverse parking next to a kerb and driving next to cycle lanes.
The cameras 80-degree view comes on automatically when you indicate left, or you can turn it on manually at any time with a button on the end of the indicator stalk.
My second favourite feature was the Civic's retracting, side-roller parcel shelf! It is a GENIUS idea! It meant no storing of enormous solid parcel shelf or wielding a large, heavy full-width beam style one either! Or trying to store that under the boot floor!
Equally impressive, the Civic could hold a surprising amount in its boot. Empty I could get 11 shopping bags in, five across the seat backs and six across the front of the boot where it widens slightly.
Or I could get the Mountain Buggy stroller and two shopping bags in there and there was room on top of the pram for a big nappy bag as well!
I did find the shape of the boot a little awkward to use at first. It has a deep drop down to the boot floor, wheel arch indents and then a narrowing toward the seat backs. The whole car domes inwards at the top so the boot mouth is very shaped. Once I negotiated which parts of the boot the stroller would fit across, and where all the lumps and bumps were, I was okay!
The space in the cabin of the Civic is surprisingly good, my 186cm-tall husband could just fit in the passenger front seat with a rear facing child seat behind him. He couldn’t recline the seat back as much as he would have liked but his knees weren’t touching the glove box like they have in some much bigger cars! However, his head was brushing the ceiling! The driver's seat base can be raised and lowered, but the passenger seat does not offer the same adjustment.
I found the driver's seat particularly uncomfortable as it had an ‘S’ shape to its backrest and I could not wear a ponytail! The backrests in the back seats sloped away at too much of an angle for me to sit comfortably there too.
If the Honda Civic is a real consideration for you as a BabyDrive and one of you is tall, then I would consider how long you are going to have your baby rear facing. With a forward facing child seat, there is obviously much more room to recline the passenger seat in front of it.
Installing child seats came with a few difficulties too. I could fit two child seats in the Civic in the outer back seats, there was not enough room for a middle child seat too.
The ISO Fix anchor points are on the two outer rear seats and were so deeply embedded between the leather seat cushioning on either side that I found it very difficult to connect the ISO Fix and had to climb into the back seat on both sides to wrestle them in.
The top tether anchor points for the two outer seats are positioned on the reverse of the seat backs. The middle seat top tether anchor point is positioned on the boot floor behind the seat back. On either side of this however and directly underneath the two outer top tether anchor points are boot cargo net anchor points, which do look different but I can imagine that they would get mistaken by a few as the top tether anchor points. I think this is simply a bad design by Honda that could easily lead to confusion and wrong installation of child seats.
BabyDrive Indepth
BabyDrive Indepth - Storage
In the front of the Honda Civic, there are two cupholders situated in the long, thin, central console storage box. They are two different sizes; one would hold a coffee cup and the other a large drinks bottle.
The door pockets in the front are not lined and they are not very big. They will only hold a 600ml bottle or baby bottle. I could just get my wallet in beside it and the iPad would only fit sticking out at an angle.
The door handles are little wells, which is good for putting your keys or small things in when putting baby into the car.
The central console storage box lid is the driver's armrest and slides forwards and backwards over the cup holder below. There is also a USB socket in there and enough room for your wallet behind the cup holders, but the box does not fully seal.
In front of the gear lever is a rubber lined shelf that is perfect for your phone as there is a gap at the back to feed the wire through to the 12V socket and USB ports situated below to charge it. There is another shelf where these sockets are. This area is quite well hidden, so a useful area for charging a passenger's phone as well.
The glovebox at first glance appears small however I could fit the car manual, iPad and my wallet in there with a little space beside them.
In the back, there is a half map pocket on the back of the front passenger seat only, but the driver's side does not have one.
The door pockets in the back will only hold a 600ml bottle or baby bottle. A fold-down armrest in the central seat has two different size cup holders; one would hold a 600ml bottle but it did rattle around a bit, while the other is suitable for a large bottle or coffee cup.
The Honda Civic has a surprisingly large boot! When the boot is empty you can get 11 shopping bags in, six at the front and five across the seat backs.
I could fit both my Mountain Buggy Urban Jungle stroller, my Britax Holiday2 umbrella stroller and two shopping bags in the boot. There was ample room on top of the Mountain Buggy for a nappy bag too and the parcel shelf could still pull across with all this in the boot.
With just the Mountain Buggy Urban Jungle stroller in the boot, I could get five shopping bags around it with the parcel shelf pulled over the top. There was still the gap on top of the pram where you could put a large nappy bag.
With the Britax Holiday2 umbrella stroller in the boot, you can get 9 shopping bags in around it.
The small stroller only just fits across the boot, in between the wheel arches, but the boot narrows towards the seat backs so the stroller doesn't fit right up against them. The floor of the boot also raises at the back so the stroller fits better at the front of the boot.
The boot space and its functionality are really important. I like to have a big boot space and little side wells or areas I can divide things into. So something I don’t want to move around while I’m driving such as Tulsi’s lunch bag or her wet swimming gear can be sectioned off in a little well where it’s not going to spill or get squashed by the rest of the things in the boot.
Hooks for securing shopping bags to are also favourites of mine, I like being able to secure the bag containing more fragile things like eggs so they don’t move around on the journey.
I measure the boot space in freezer shopping bags, prams and dogs. Not because I think all there is to a mum’s life is food shopping, prams and dogs. (Although it can feel like it sometimes!!) But because these are visually mesurable items we can all associate with. For me, the car company boot measurement of litres is not an amount I can easily visualise and 400L in one car may differ in usability to that in another due to the configuration or shape of the space.
The boot would be big enough for a large or medium size dog to lie down in if you left the parcel shelf open. They wouldn't be able to stand up because the boot door is sloped. So they would have to stay laying down. With the parcel shelf open there is a gap between the top of the backrest and the ceiling so they would get a good amount of air and be able to sit up and see out. The back windscreen has a shade and it is tinted so they would be partially shielded from the sun.
I found it relatively easy to move things in an out of the boot, but you do have to bend down and in as the boot floor is much lower than the bumper. There is quite a deep ledge to lift things over into the boot also. The boot narrows towards the seat backs and domes slightly at the top so you do have to negotiate a few things. However, the boot space is good once you get used to its quirks!
It’s a great boot for a nappy change because the large drop down to the floor means the baby can’t roll out. The bending down is a bit far but the main boot floor is level and nicely lined with a soft carpeting.
There are no sockets in the boot, but there is a well-hidden hook to the left underneath the parcel shelf and a light that automatically comes on when you open the boot.
There is no hidden under floor storage; the floor does lift up but the spare wheel is underneath there.
The parcel shelf is fantastic! I haven’t used one like it before. It is a retracting roller blind that you simply pull over from one side of the car to the other, using a large handle, and slot it into the catch on the opposite side.
It is a simple mechanism but works really well. I LOVE it!! You don't have to store the parcel shelf anywhere, it can be retracted back into its small storage cassette, which you can remove altogether and swap to the opposite side of the car depending on if you are right or left handed.
In the boot, you also have four anchor points for a cargo net, two of which are situated in the boot floor either side of the central seat Top Tether point and directly underneath the Top Tether anchor points in the seat backs of the two outer seats.
Although the Top Tether points are marked with the logo, I think people could easily get confused if they have never been shown how to fit a child seat and wrongly connect the Top Tether straps to the cargo net anchor points which would definitely not be safe.
BabyDrive Indepth - Noise
The Civic was definitely not a quiet car! Every time I’d get in there’d be a ‘bong, bong’ alarm for my seatbelt or the door!! Reversing out of my driveway the front sensor would ‘beep, beep, beep’ because of a low hanging palm frond! I could not find a way to turn the volume down or off in the settings.
The Civic also gives you vocal instructions with a lady's Big Brother style voice! I tried to drive off with the handbrake on and the speakers announced ‘please release the parking brake’ it also does this for fastening seat belts. I am not sure what else it makes these announcements for but they always took me by surprise and, of course, they would disturb a sleeping baby! Tulsi wakes up if I so much as blink, so a tannoy announcement would definitely wake her!
Becoming a parent I soon realised there are some noises and sounds I feel are unnecessary and I could happily live without if it meant my baby stayed asleep!!
That often the distraction of my screaming, distressed baby is more dangerous when driving than not having a lane departure warning for example.
If it is the lane departure warning beeping that creates distress with my baby then which is safest?
It’s where I think we need to be able to strike a balance and choose when we can mute the warnings or swap them to a vibration in the steering wheel or flashing light perhaps?
A lot of these noises come with the increase in technology and especially linked to safety features and alerts. For me these all have their place.
Another thing I have realised is I spend my time in a lot more places where small children roam, parks, beaches, play gyms, swimming lessons, daycare centre etc. I have become more aware that when I’m reversing or manouvering in the car parks I have to tripple check for small children running around behind me or being in my blind spot when reversing. For this I LOVE reversing cameras, I just don’t like their beeping sounds!!
I have become so much more aware of safety and potential accidents or hazards since having a child and so I love the peace of mind that I get from the cameras and sensors combined with my own vision from windows and mirrors as I don’t trust cameras alone.
Only the top spec Civic VTi-LX comes with the lane departure warning and also an extra safety feature called Lane Keeping Assist System. This is activated by a button on the steering wheel. This judders the wheel in the direction it wants you to go and flashes a warning on the dashboard, but an alarm did not sound, which was good!
The indicator noise was a quiet tick it could not be turned down and I did not find it distressed my daughter at all.
We had the top model Honda Civic VTi-LX, the only of the five models that comes with In-car sat-nav! This seems crazy to me that it is not standard across all the models.
Using the sat-nav on the in-car system, the voice could be muted by going into the menu list via the button at the bottom right of the screen. This was simple for turning off the voice commands and turning them back on when I got to the part of the journey when I needed them. The SatNav voice was quite loud so I did not want it on for the whole journey. I could not find a way to alter the volume other than muting it.
The in-car Audio system has a 7” touchscreen which has a beep automatically each time you press it. You can turn this off deep within the system settings! I found the screen to be quite confusing and difficult to use as it was very much in a list format. The layout of each screen did not always seem the same so it was difficult to navigate. The controls are a mix of touch screen and slide screen and I found the controls were not under obvious settings or headings.
The system does have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and the nursery rhymes playing on my phone did play easily when I connected it.
The Civic's windows are nice and quiet to open and close and the driver can lock all the windows from the driver's door control panel. This is a must for preventing children from playing around with the back windows.
The doors on the other hand shut with a loud bang! The door pockets are not lined either so their contents rattled around too.
Since becoming a mum I spend A LOT of time parked up somewhere with a nice view while my daughter is asleep in the back! If it's hot I need to leave the engine running and the aircon on but I do like to get out and drink my cuppa tea in the fresh air while enjoying the fact my limbs are free from said dangling child!!
SO this is a very important test as I have found that sometimes I have been held hostage by a cars BEEEEPING alarms when I have taken off my seatbelt or opened the door while the engine is still running!!(ps I only stand outside the car I am not a bad mother!!)
But thankfully you can come to a stop, select Park, and with the engine still on take off your seatbelt and open the driver's door with no alarm going off!!
The driver can lock all the doors from the door control panel but the doors do not lock automatically.
The Civic has two different methods of alerting the driver to removed seatbelts. If it is the driver's seatbelt then you get a Big Brother announcement. If it is a back passenger then the driver gets a visual warning on their digital display showing which seatbelt has been removed and a lit, red seatbelt icon flashes on the screen for some time, even after it has been re-fastened.
The Civic is pretty quiet on the road. There is a bit of a rumble at faster speeds on country roads but around town it’s quiet. Apart from the lion purring under the bonnet! There is a constant purring sound coming from the engine, that at first I wasn’t sure where the noise was coming from but it was definitely under my bonnet! It is not a disturbing noise, you just wonder at first if it is you or coming from outside. Up hills, the lion woke, and I got a bit of a roar from the engine and if I accidentally knocked it into sport mode, but other than that, the Civic is a quiet BabyDrive!
BabyDrive Indepth - Car Seats
There was comfortably enough room to install two child seats in the two outer seats of the five-seater Honda Civic hatchback. There was not enough room for a third child seat in the middle.
There are three top tether points in the Honda Civic and two IsoFix. The iso fix is situated in the two outer seats. The central seat top tether point is located in the boot floor and the outer two seats top tether anchor points are located in the back of their seat backs.
Connecting the ISOFix however is not easy. The IsoFix points are located deep within the connecting seat leather, in between the seat back and seat bases.
Once I had finally managed to connect the ISOFix, I found it easiest to attach the top tether from the boot by leaning in to reach the anchor points.
You must be careful when attaching the top tether fastening that you attach them to the correct anchor points and not the cargo net anchor points situated directly below them. Making the cargo net anchor points even more easy to mistake for top tethers is the fact they are either side of the central top tether point.
The seat backs are split 60:40 and if you bring the seat back forward to attach a top tether anchor point, a red tab comes up on the catch on the shoulder of the backrest to indicate the seat back is not locked in position (it goes away when you push the seat back into its locked position).
Attaching the top tether this way I found more difficult because you have to attach the ISOfix afterwards. Because the ISOFix is so hard to locate within the leather folds I found I needed as much space as possible and manoeuvrability of the child seat in order to connect the ISOfix.
I also found that a standard top tether strap was only just long enough to connect to the anchor point. This seemed crazy for a small hatchback it is only normally wagons or SUVs that I have to use an extension for. The lack of flex in the strap made it even harder to get my daughter into her child seat.
Posting baby into a rear-facing child seats is nearly impossible. In fact, I nearly stopped using the Honda Civic by day four and returned to our family car because posting my daughter into her child seat was such a traumatic event because the roof slopes down at the sides.
I had to fold her into a triangle and post her in head first which she clearly didn't like! From inside the car, it was just as difficult to post Tulsi into her child seat.
Australia being a country of weather extremes- blazing sun and torrential rain, mean you may find it easier to put Bub into their seat from inside the car sometimes. If it’s hot you can get the air-con going, cool the car down and not stand out in the sun while you fasten them in or shelter from the rain and not get soaked yourself whilst you’re doing it. So it is important to test whether Bub can be easily installed from either direction!
You can feed Bub in the back seats with only one child seat installed however there is not much room to do so.
Only the two top-spec models (RS and VTi-LX) have leather seats, while the lower three models have cloth seats. The RS and VTi-LX both have heated front seats and the leather is perforated, but back seats are not perforated and would wipe clean easily.
I found the angle of the back seats uncomfortable because I felt I was leaning backwards too far. This angle cannot be adjusted so I would find it difficult to ride in the back of a Civic for a long journey.
For the first year of Tulsi's life when we would go out as a family, if I wasn’t driving, I would travel in the back with Tulsi so it’s important to check the back seat comfort as you may be spending a lot of time in them! They were never something I gave any thought to before but I definitely notice a good or bad back seat now!
BabyDrive Indepth - Drive & Comfort
The front seats of the Civic were uncomfortable; they are scalloped so that they stick into your lower back and curve away from your shoulders, while the headrest then curves forward so you have to sit in an S-shape which I found very uncomfortable. Also, I could not have a ponytail with these seats and headrest!
I had spent hours styling my hair this morning to get it just right too… said no new mum ever!!!
When I travelled in the back middle seat I was pressed against the child seat next to me which wasn’t comfortable for me or acceptable for my daughter!!
The footwell has a hump in the middle and there is not much space between the seat and the back of the central console box. So I had to sit with my knees up, which was okay because I am 162cm tall and it was a short journey, however, someone taller would struggle to sit here and for any length of time!
The passenger front seat goes back far enough for my 186cm husband to sit in front of the rear-facing child seat and have enough legroom.
However, the headroom in the passenger front seat does not cater for his height and does not have up/down seat base adjustment so his head was brushing against the ceiling. In the driver's seat, he could lower the seat base so had more headroom.
The steering wheel adjusts up/down and in/out but the lever to adjust it is situated really far down the steering column so you have to really reach into the footwell to get to it. I also thought for a few days that the steering wheel only adjusted up and down not in an out, but it is just extremely stiff!!
We had the top spec VTi-LX model Civic which is the only one that comes with Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Low-Speed Follow (LSF). It wasn’t obvious at first how you even turn the cruise control on! I eventually worked it out! You press a button labelled ‘main’ on the steering wheel to activate it and then use the up/down arrows to adjust and set the speed. The cruise control turned out to be simple to use as the digital display tells you the speed you have set it at and you can adjust it up and down using simple buttons on the steering wheel.
I did find though that the cruise control was very inaccurate around 60 km/h and got up to 77 km/h before it braked to slow down.
The Honda Civic we drove had heated seats at the front. This was a nice feature during winter mornings! The air conditioning I found to be difficult to use because a lot of the settings are in the touchscreen, which I found a little over-complicated and difficult whilst driving. The temperature controls are dials on the central dash within easy arm's reach.
I also found the air conditioning to be quite ineffective and didn't cool the cab as quickly as I would have liked.
There are slim air vents in the central dashboard and one on either end of the dashboard, but none in the back.
The windows have tinted privacy glass which helps with the sun however my daughter has had real trouble with the sun coming straight in on her eyes from the boot window, which is very large and sloped. I suspect this is why there is more surface for the sun to come in. The side windows are quite small and they are not very deep which makes visibility for rear-facing passengers quite difficult. From the outside of the car, you would think it would be difficult for the driver to see out of the back windscreen however from inside the car you can see out of all the window area below the spoiler as well as above it.
The ceiling is quite domed in the Honda Civic and so inside you have a feeling of being cocooned within the dark interior.
The vanity mirrors are lit for both front passengers on the model I drove. There is no glasses case where it would normally be in the ceiling. Instead, there are press on interior lights and the sunroof controls.
The interior light for the back seats is situated centrally in the ceiling but towards the back sea, so cannot be reached by the driver and would be difficult to reach from outside the back doors when putting a child into their child seat.
I have found Tulsi does not like travelling in the dark in the car so if it gets dark whilst travelling then I reach back and turn the interior light on for her. So it’s really important for me that I can reach the rear ceiling light.
Also if I am traveling home and it is getting near to bed time and I DEFINITELY DON’T want her to fall asleep in the car as even a 5minute nap in the car means bed time is all over!!!! I lean back and pop the light on so it’s not dark and try to keep her awake!! Along with screaming/singing at the top of my voice!!!
It is also useful when there are lights situated above the doors where the handles are usually positioned. These are good for when putting baby into their child seats when visibility is poor, so you do not have to reach across them to a light situated in the ceiling centrally etc.
The Honda Civic is fine to drive around town and nippy on country roads but it does have a running noise similar to a purring lion coming from the engine and is very noisy uphill. I also felt at the top of a hill where there was a T-junction the car felt like it was going to stall, I revved the engine and it found its gear but for a few seconds, I was a little worried!
I found the Civic easy to manoeuvre and park, you know where the parameters are despite my original concerns when I saw the narrow windows and spoiler dissecting the back windscreen!
There is a side view camera in the left mirror, this comes on automatically when you indicate left but you can turn it on manually with a button on the end of the indicator stalk.
This is great in conjunction with the reversing camera especially when reverse parallel parking against a kerb, so you don’t scratch your wheels!
The interior of the Civic matches the design of the exterior. There are a lot of angled compartments in the cab, shelves, wells and cubbies all over the place. It is only the media system I feel could use a little more careful consideration.
The door surfaces would wipe clean easily and there are carpet floor mats throughout the car.
There is keyless entry but no power tailgate.
The Civic has a kilometres to empty function, situated on the digital display which is a great BabyDrive feature.
The distance to empty display becomes extra important as a mum because getting fuel with a baby is a whole new world of difficult. If they are screaming in the car you definitely do not want your journey prolonged with a fuel stop! If they are asleep the turning off of the engine, doors opening and locking and unlocking, then re-opening the doors and closing, starting the engine again, beepers going off because you haven’t got your seatbelt on when you start the car or because you blink in the wrong direction, do you take them out of the car when you go in to pay? If you do will you get them back in the seat again or will they have a complete meltdown and you’ll be stuck on the fuel station forecourt with a screaming baby!! Hopefully you are starting to gather the anxiety that what was once a simple fuel stop can be for a mum!!!!
For this reason the distance to empty display can let you know if you have enough fuel to make it home with bub and then go out and get fuel another time when you will not have to take bub with you.
BabyDrive Indepth - Safety
The Honda Civic has a five-star ANCAP safety rating.
The Honda Civic range all come with six airbags and load limiting pre-tensioner seatbelts in the front as standard. The six airbags include driver and front passenger front and side airbags and curtain airbags for the front and rear side passengers.
The standard safety features across the Civic range include Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Brake-Force Distribution (EBD), Emergency Stop Signal (ESS) that activates the hazard lights when you slam on the brakes, Tyre Deflation Warning System (DWS), Vehicle stability assist (VSA), Security alarm and Hill Start Assist.
The top spec VTi-LX model comes with the Honda Sensing Suite range of various safety and driver assistance technologies. These include Forward Collision Warning (FCW) that gives you audible and visual warnings if the car senses a collision may occur, Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS) kicks in and applies the brakes to lessen the severity of impact if a collision is unavoidable and you missed the FCW.
Lane Departure Warning (LDW) alerts you with a warning on the screen and an alarm if you drift out of your lane, while Road Departure Mitigation System (RDM) will steer you back into your lane and apply the brakes when necessary if it thinks you have ignored the LDW. Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS) will maintain your position in a lane, which is useful on motorway journeys.
Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with Low-Speed Follow (LSF) allow you to keep your safe set distance from the car you are following, even at low speeds, which is particularly useful in traffic jams.
My main safety concern with the Civic was the potential for confusion with the Top Tether anchor points and cargo net anchor points. This would be more of a user error but could have dire consequences.
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