Honda Civic TourerSR 1.6 i-DTEC

With more than 5,000 miles showing on the odometer, the honeymoon period might be over, but I’m still enjoying life with ‘my’ Honda Civic Tourer. As with any good estate, the Tourer is a car that stands out for its boot space, and this fact certainly proved useful over Christmas. Presents for all my girlfriend’s family and my own; enough food to feed the troops and numerous clinking bottles of pop (and stronger remedies) barely made a dent. In fact, my only worry was presents going astray as a result of its cavernous proportions, only to be found long after the New Year. After a few seasonal evenings out, my other half took up driving duties and found the Civic easy to get used to. She particularly liked its progressive brakes, as our MkVI Golf's middle pedal does exhibit rather grabby tendencies.

As I’m sure many of you also experienced, we were treated to a heavy snow shower on Boxing Day, with a good covering sticking around for a week thanks to some very chilly weather. The resultant mixture of slush re-froze each night and looked particularly treacherous, but the Civic seemed to cope well. Plenty of tread on its Michelin tyres probably helped, as did its smooth and accurate throttle, allowing me to delicately accelerate and avoid spinning the wheels fruitlessly. On the downside, the Civic has a large and steeply raked windscreen, so it can take some time for the heat from the demisting vents to reach the part you actually look through. Watching the clear patch slowly creep north, I normally run out of patience and grab the nearest cloth. It's a good job the heated seats work rather more quickly, because the black leather upholstery can be alarmingly cold first thing in the morning. If only there was a smartphone application to turn them on from indoors, that would be ideal. A suggestion for the next Civic, perhaps?

One piece of kit I'm less convinced by is the adaptive damper system fitted to SR and EX Plus trim levels. These trick dampers are fitted to the rear suspension and have 'Comfort', 'Normal' and 'Dynamic' settings. Many a time I've turned it from its firmest to softest modes just to test it out, and while I can feel a subtle difference, I'm just not sure if its target audience will see much benefit. It hardly turns the Tourer into a car you want to head to your favourite B-road in. I'm guessing its real worth is that it can automatically adjust the rear suspension if you are carrying a heavy load, which is a welcome safety feature for those carrying passengers, their kit and maybe even a few bikes slung on a boot carrier. While this would leave many cars looking like their suspension had collapsed, the Civic should in theory be right as rain.