www.which.co.uk/cars/choosing-... The Honda Civic isn't quite the force it once was; the Ford Focus and Vauxhall Astra dominate the medium-car-sector sales in the UK, Kia and Hyundai undercut it substantially on price and the VW Golf still has a stronghold on the higher end of this car class.
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Honda is hoping the new Civic Tourer will invigorate sales, with a dash of style, a shot of driving performance and a whole crate of loading space.
Based on the existing Civic hatchback, the Tourer has the same width and height and, more importantly, the same wheelbase (the distance between the front wheels and rear wheels) as the five-door version. But it is 235mm longer, with all that additional length coming from behind the rear wheels.
That means all the extra space is devoted to the boot. And it's a whopper. Claimed capacity is 624 litres up to the window line and including 174 litres of storage space under the boot floor.
The Tourer's powered by two of the engines you can select in the Civic hatch: a 1.8-litre petrol with 140bhp with the choice of six-speed manual or six-speed auto gearboxes, and a 1.6-litre diesel that's capable of returning sub-100g/km CO2 emissions and 74.3mpg from the 118bhp unit.