Up:Â Good price, good tech, reliable
Down:Â Why do any cars still come with hubcaps?
Neutral:Â If you just want a good car that works, get this.
My good friend had poor luck with her 5th generation Volkswagen Passat and decided it was time for an upgrade. What she ended up with is this 2014 Honda Civic LX and she couldn’t be happier. I also got excited when it turned up at my house so I could ask to do a review on it. I know the 10th generation of Civic came just out in 2016 but a used 9th gen is a car that people my age would, and should, buy.
I won’t take long on describing the specs because by now everyone knows what a Honda Civic is. It’s a 2 or 4-door economy car with front wheel drive and a four cylinder engine pushing out around 140 horsepower (201 for the Si). Basically, it’s the every day person’s perfect every day car. There is plenty of room, it gets 30+ miles to the gallon, and literally everything works. So let’s get down to my review.
I thought the best way to review this Civic was just to take it to run a couple of errands I had to do anyways. When I hopped in, the first thing I noticed was the split console in front of me. On the bottom half was a tachometer behind the steering wheel and all of the typical radio/climate buttons in the center. Above the tachometer was a second dashboard that displayed your miles per hour how efficiently you are or are not driving. Next to that in the same cluster is a small (I’ll say 4 inch) screen that displays all of the infotainment.
All of that tech definitely made the car look and feel modern but what Honda really wants to make sure you notice is the large green “ECON” button just to the left of the steering wheel. When you press it, a leaf icon shows up next to the tachometer and the car is supposed to do three things: not let you accelerate as fast, shift sooner, and limit how long the air conditioning runs in one sitting. However, I drove around in both regular and ECON modes and could tell no discernible difference between the two. If the button does actually effect the car, it’s very minor.
In addition to the ECON button, the Civic also comes with Eco-Assist. I believe this comes with most Honda models and it’s a tool to help owners drive more efficiently. There are two color changing lines on each side of your speedometer and a fuel-efficiency gauge to help keep you informed. The system isn’t ultra-advanced like a plugin hybrid, but it gets the job done just fine. When I played with it I found that the bars will stay green (for efficient) if I generally stayed below 2000 rpms. If I drove a little harder the bars would turn blue and if I went harder still… they stayed blue. Basically Honda wants you to just stay in the green (insert winky face).
So I got to experience how it drove during my errands and I was waiting in line at the bank for my final stop. There was one car in front of me and I decided to challenge the car to see if I could connect to Bluetooth (BT) before the customer left. BT was already active on my phone so I clicked the “Phone” button on the center console and followed the instructions on the infotainment screen. It searched for my device, gave me a password to enter, and connected in a breeze. I even got “I Feel It Coming” by the Weeknd to play before I had to pull the car up to the teller’s window. In short, any person of any age should be able to connect to this Civic with ease.
At the end of the day, the 2014 Honda Civic LX drives exactly how you think it would. There’s not much to report there. However, the tech on the inside will make any Millennial feel modern enough and any Gen-X or Boomer feel like they’re ahead of the curve. Honda knows exactly how to make the perfect daily driver they’re able to smash all of those features into a sub $20,000 package (sub $15,000 used). It’s hard to say anything bad about a car like that so I’m happy to report that I am pleasantly unsurprised.
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