The world is finally getting its first look at the 11th generation Honda Civic. Unfortunately, Honda deigned to provide only a single photo — we’ll have to wait till April 28 to get a full gallery along with the car’s technical specifications.
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Nonetheless, that single glimpse tells us more than we knew after Honda originally unveiled the 2022 Civic prototype (on Twitch.tv, of all things). The production version doesn’t look all that different from the prototype, but it does have a few notable changes, like a significant lack of glossy black accents and the addition of fog lights, matte black trim on the two grilles and air intake, and body-colored mirror caps.
The specific 2022 Honda Civic in the image is actually the flagship Touring model, which features front parking sensors (you can just see them on the upper grille) and a sunroof. The car also has chrome window surrounds instead of the glossy black finish that the prototype rocked. Unfortunately, we can ascertain nothing of the interior besides what Honda tells us: that it is “simple and sporty.”
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We certainly wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be true. Compared to the current model, the 2022 Honda Civic already looks simple and sporty, with more elegant lines and fewer angles. Naysayers will say it looks too much like the Accord, but this new Civic will doubtless be less polarizing than the 10th-gen Civic as long as it doesn’t retain the latter’s taillight design — and we already know from the prototype that it doesn’t.
Just as we’ll have to wait for April 28 to get more images of the 11th generation Honda Civic, we’ll also have to wait to get the engine specs. That said, Honda has promised the car will be more engaging to drive than any Civic that came before. What we can say is that it will continue being exclusively front-wheel driven and that the high-performance Type R variant — once more based on the hatchback model — will return. The Civic Coupe, on the other hand, may not.
Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.