The long-awaited 2022 Honda Civic sedan has finally made its global debut. The new generation Civic will be launched in the USA later this year; however, its India launch is yet to be finalised. China will be the first market to welcome the new Civic, followed by the Japan and the United States.
The 2022 Honda Civic looks largely identical to the Civic prototype, which was showcased in November 2020. The sedan continues to feature wide and low stance that has been signature styling. It looks more mature with lesser body creases and sports cleaner design, which is clearly influenced by bigger Accord.
Upfront is a wide, horizontally placed LED headlamps with integrated LED DRLs (Daytime Running Lamps), and a body-coloured grille. The front design is heavily inspired by the new generation HR-V. It comes with new front bumper with a larger fog lamp housing finished in black. There is a strong shoulder line that runs across the length and merges into the wraparound tail-lamps. The rear has simple elongated vertically stacked LED tail-lamps, new bumper and new tailgate. The existing model comes with liftback styling, while the new model has proper sedan-like rear profile.
In terms of proportions, the new 2022 Honda Civic is 4,673mm long, 1,800mm wide and 1,414mm tall, and has a wheelbase of 2,735mm. Compared to the existing model, the new Civic is 32mm longer and the wheelbase has been increased by 35mm. The width of the car has been marginally increased by 1mm, while the height is reduced by 19mm. The boot space has been reduced by 100-litres to 419-litres.
The new 2022 Honda Civic comes with cleaner interiors, as it eliminated most of the buttons. The buttons visible are to control the air-conditioning, blinkers, multimedia and the electronic handbrake. Most of the multimedia functions are now added to the floating screen, which ranges from 7-inch to 9-inch. The infotainment unit is compatible with wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
The new Civic Touring comes equipped with a 10.2-inch fully digital instrument console, while the other variants get 7-inch screen. It comes with a wireless charger for smartphones and Bose sound system with 12 speakers.
The new model comes with Honda Sensing package of driving assistance and safety as standard. It features a front camera and eight radars for detection pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles on road, which should improve its emergency autonomous braking. The sedan gets adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist.
The 2022 Honda Civic also gets a new front airbag, which has a format called “donut”, with 3 layers of inflatable bags. This is claimed to reduce the chance of hitting head when sliding through the airbag on impact. The company has also made changes to the structure, as the A-Coloum and side has been redesigned to better absorb the impacts. The roof is claimed to have received a more rigid structure.
The new Civic gets McPherson suspension at the front with new low-friction joins and shock absorbers bearings. At the back, it gets the multilink suspension with new bushings to improve NVH levels. The sedan features the 2.0-litre naturally-aspirated petrol engine that produces 160bhp at 6,500rpm and 186Nm of torque at 4,200rpm.
The high-end variants are equipped with a 1.5-litre 4-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine that churns out 182bhp at 6,000rpm and 240Nm of torque at 1,700rpm. Both engines are paired to a CVT automatic gearbox.
