Ordinarily if you're looking at buying a Honda Civic, we'd steer you towards the excellent
1.6-litre diesel.
However, recent noises by the Mayor of London seem to suggest that drivers of economical
diesel cars may face an additional charge to enter the city, and that's got people thinking
about a shift back towards petrol.
The success of Honda's diesel engines has led many people to forget that the Civic is
also available with a choice of two petrol VTEC units, a 1.4 with 99hp and this, the
1.8 with 140hp.
The Civic range was treated to a bit of an update earlier in the year, most notably with
the arrival of black trim on the front bumper and again on the tailgate beneath the spoiler
and integrated high-level stop-light.
A series of electronic driver aids were also made available, and these use a set of cameras
and sensors mounted in the windscreen to provide functions such as traffic sign recognition,
collision warning and braking, and blind spot information that also illuminates a warning
in the door mirrors.
There were a few tweaks to the interior, too, although these were largely just small details,
and that's just as well because the Civic's interior is already well laid out, although
we will say that models with the optional sunroof can cut into headroom for tall drivers.
The dash itself retains its driver-oriented layout, with a design that wraps around the
driver into the doors and switch-gear that's well positioned and has a quality feel.
The instruments are deeply-cowled and very easy to read, with a large central rev counter,
while the speedo and trip computer are housed in a separate binnacle above this, the idea
being that they're easier to read at a glance without taking your eyes off the road.
Our SR test car features Honda's premium audio and navigation system which features pan-European
mapping and full UK post codes, plus DAB digital radio and a built-in hard drive to store your
music.
It sounds pretty good, too, and there's a subwoofer mounted in the boot.
Back seat passengers should have little to complain about with a respectable amount of
space, but it's Honda's Magic Seats that the Civic has become famous for.
These allow the seat bases to flip up so you can carry tall loads in the cabin, but they
also fold flat in one convenient movement to form an almost completely flat load floor.
In the boot there's 401 litres of space with the seats in place, plus an additional 76
litres in a handy under-floor compartment.
The load sill is perhaps a little higher than we'd like, and models with the subwoofer lose
around 10 litres of space, but fold the seats forward and total capacity rises to 1,378
litres.
Right, well, that's enough of the practicalities, time to look under the bonnet.
The 1.8-litre i-VTEC unit produces 140hp and 174Nm of torque.
With the exception of the forthcoming Type R, that makes the 1.8 the fastest Civic in
the range, with a 0-62mph time of 9.1 seconds and a top whack of 134mph.
CO2 emissions of 145g/km place it in Band F, while the official combined cycle figure
of 46.3mpg isn't far off the mark, as we averaged around 44mpg during our testing.
On the road, it's very quiet.
In fact, at idle, it's difficult to hear the engine at all, and once you're up to speed,
it's likely that road noise is what you'll hear over the engine anyway.
As we'd expect from Honda, the six-speed manual gearbox has a fabulous shift-action through
its stubby lever, and although the petrol engine is happy to lollop along at low revs
in high gears, given the slick shift action is no hardship to downshift to get the best
out of it.
It gets a bit more raucous when you do, but it's more of a hard-edged VTEC sound than
anything coarse or thrashy.
For driveability, the diesel beats it, thanks to its far greater torque reserves, but the
1.8 has sufficient balls to make pretty decent progress on your favourite back-roads.
On most surfaces the Civic's ride is composed, and it continues to turn in well, but despite
the recent update to its suspension settings there is still a slightly unsettled feeling
that comes across on poorly-surfaced dual-carriageways.
A quick word, too, about those electronic driver aids.
No doubt there are occasions where they could save your bacon, but we found the blind-spot
monitoring system to be a little paranoid, issuing warnings when joining motorways from
a slip-road and changing lanes in traffic.
The collision mitigation system also threw up a few warnings at strange situations, like
here approaching this bridge, and if we weren't already applying the brakes, it's likely the
car would have done so automatically, potentially creating a very difficult situation.
Thankfully, these systems are currently optional extras, so you can have your Civic without
them.
Those issues aside, the Civic continues to be - in our opinion - the most practical hatchback
on the market, and if the day comes that we all need to move away from our beloved diesels,
it's good to know that the masters of the VTEC system have got us covered.