CAR GAZING
Saving the Earth without being ugly
Honda Civic Hybrid gets great gas mileage, doesn't have a weird body
By Derek Price
I understand the appeal of hybrid cars. They get better gas mileage, which saves you money and saves the baby polar bears.
But I don't understand why most hybrid cars have to be so ugly. It's as if the boss told his designers, "Make me a car that looks like a walrus. Or a toaster with severe birth defects. Or maybe a pregnant refrigerator."
The Honda Civic Hybrid, though, is different. The boss said, "Make me a car that looks like every other Civic."
And that's exactly what it is. The Earth-friendly version of the Civic looks just like any other, without any funky shapes or eco-snob styling. It doesn't dress up in Elton John's wardrobe and dance on a green stage, instead opting for a low-key approach. It just does its job of saving gas without any fanfare.
And that's why I love it.
The Civic Hybrid uses similar technology to other hybrid cars, using batteries and electric motors to help a small gas engine. The batteries are recharged every time you hit the brakes.
But that's where the similarities stop. A lot of today's hybrid cars – like the Civic Hybrid's little brother, the Insight – use gimmicks to flaunt their green credentials, with green leaves that grow bigger as you drive more efficiently, for example.
Seriously, do people need a big green leaf to tell them they get better mileage when they lay off the gas pedal?
From that standpoint, the Civic Hybrid is a simple car. It has a tiny, 1.3-liter gasoline engine that's coupled with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) that, when you really mash the gas pedal, makes it sound like a squirrel being waterboarded.
Despite the screaming rodent under the hood, acceleration is decent thanks to the boost it gets from the electric motors. It drives essentially like any other economy car, but it gets far better mileage – 40 mpg in town and 45 on the highway.
You can outfit the Civic Hybrid to be a very nice car, including a navigation system that knows more than 7 million points of interest, leather seats, a stereo that can play MP3 music from memory cards, automatic climate control with an air filter, and a Bluetooth connection for your phone.
Pricing starts at $23,800, which is $8,000 more than the base Civic.
To be fair, the hybrid version comes with a lot more standard equipment than the base version, so it's not apples-to-apples. A top-end Civic Hybrid with leather seats, navigation and satellite radio will set you back $27,000.
But my favorite feature of all comes standard: getting great gas mileage without having to look like an eco-freak.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.)
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