The Honda Civic was one of the best cars in the D-segment and easily trounced all its competitors in the D-segment back in its heyday, but Honda made a mistake by sticking to its petrol only formula and slowly began losing out on customers because literally everyone wanted a diesel car and only the hardcore enthusiasts went for the petrol variants. Sales gradually declined and Honda had to eventually stop production of the Civic in India.
In many international markets though, Honda continued production of the civic and kept launching updated and facelifts in order to keep up with the times but didn’t receive any great response from customers. The Civics launched internationally looked very similar to its sibling, the Honda City and this kept many customers away from purchasing the car as one would not want to pay D-segment money for C-segment looks.
There were rumors floating about that Honda was planning to re-launch the Civic in India, but Honda kept declining them and now, we have stumbled upon some interesting information. We have learnt from our sources that, Honda Siel cars India has recently imported a single unit of a left hand drive, diesel civic from the USA. The car was apparently imported for R&D purposes and under the hood was the 1.6 liter Earth Dreams diesel engine.
Now this bit of news put a few questions in our heads and had us wondering if Honda was seriously considering re-launching the Civic in India with a diesel under the hood. Products in the D-segment are not doing all that well in the Indian market, thanks to all the manufacturers launching their C-segment sedans, with features filled to the brim and it does not make sense any longer for Honda to re-launch the Civic India.
We already know of Honda’s plans to launch the next-gen Jazz in 2015, the new 2015 Accord and also their compact SUV based on the Brio, but we are not entirely sure of their plans to launch the Civic in India again.
In the United Kingdom, Honda sells the civic in the form of a hatchback as well as a tourer and both of them are powered by either a petrol engine or a diesel engine. The diesel engine in question here is the 1.6 liter Earth Dreams i-Dtec engine producing a maximum power of 120PS at 4,000 rpm and a peak torque output of 300Nm at 2,000 rpm.
Honda could have imported the car to test the engine in Indian conditions to check if the engine would perform well in MPV’s and the like. We will never know until Honda makes an official statement regarding the launch of the civic.
Watch this space for more news regarding the Honda Civic.
To read more on Honda Civic, Click here
Also see – Honda India to launch 5 new cars by 2016
Source – Zauba.com
