Official: Honda to launch facelifted Civic in India

Honda has now made it official – it will launch the 10th generation Civic in India, but with a change. The automaker has revealed that the facelifted 10th-gen Civic will be the car that will land here. This is a good development as the facelifted car will be freshly updated when it launches here during 2019.

Yoichiro Ueno, President and CEO of Honda Cars India Ltd, has confirmed this development and has also revealed that the all-new Civic will not get the turbocharged petrol engine for the market here. Here are his statements on the same,

We have received a lot of requests for the Civic which is very successful in other countries. So we are studying this model for India and, so far, the result is very positive. So we are going to implement it here now. It will take a while due to localisation of components and the development of the specification for India. We would like to bring the latest models, so coinciding the launch of the facelift in India with other countries will be good. I think that’s good timing for India. The 1.5 turbo is a very expensive engine for India.

Honda has already begun building the 1.6 liter i-DTEC turbocharged diesel engine in India, at its Rajasthan factory. This engine will be used in the CR-V SUV that will be launched in 2018. The same engine is vert likely to be used in the all-new Civic as well.

The sedan will also get a petrol engine – the 1.8 liter unit that develops around 140 Bhp of peak power. Both manual and automatic gearbox options are likely on the petrol engine. The diesel engine, however, may get only a 6 speed manual transmission. The Civic will be a front wheel drive model.

It will be assembled in India with enough localization to keep prices competitive. The Civic will compete with the Toyota Corolla Altis and the Skoda Octavia. Though the D-Segment sedan space is not expanding due to customers preferring SUVs, Honda is going ahead with the Civic’s launch.

The company’s customer surveys have indicated that a lot of existing Honda City buyers would want to upgrade to the Civic. Expect prices of the new Civic to start from Rs. 15 lakhs. The sedan will be making a comeback after 6 long years. It was discontinued in 2013.

Via ACI