![]() |
A idler pulley replaces the hydraulic power steering pump with EPS |
Coming to the rest of the car, the K20A Civic comes fully spec'ed as is the norm with cars marketed by Honda Malaysia. In addition to the now standard set of ABS, EBD, BA and dual-SRS, the K20A Civic additionally has EPS (electrical power steering) similar to the City and Jazz. The virtues of EPS has already been explained many times in my reviews of those cars so I won't go through them again. The K20A Civic also uses an automatic air-cond (i.e. what we like to call climate-control) which until now is only available in the luxury oriented models (i.e. Accord, Odyssey, etc).
The K20A engine is quite a bit heavier than the D17A engine which powers all Civic sedans until now. This will skew the front to rear weight distribution towards the front and to accomodate for the heavier front weight bias, the suspension (spring and absorber rates) and anti-roll bars were tuned but the chassis remains essentially identical between the 2.0l and 1.7l version. In terms of this tuning, the Honda R&D engineers were very careful to emphasize to me that the K20A Civic is designed for luxury with performance. They seemed very eager to get this message across and it was only during this review session that I finally understood the reason for it. This will be explained when I do the subjective performance evaluation for this K20A Civic later in this article.
Enough of just looking at the K20A Civic then. The proof of a pudding is in its eating and so for me and I am sure for all readers of this article, the most important parts are to come, the performance evaluations ! But first, befitting its position as Honda Malaysia's premier sporty model and its great importance to us enthusiast, I want to take a special look at how much of it's spec'ed rating the K20A engine really delivers. To do that, I sent the K20A Civic for a dyno-check !
To evaluate the true power potential of the K20A engine on this 2.0l Civic, I sent it for a dyno-check on a reference level Dynojet chassis dynamometer. This dyno-check was made possible by TOVA's main sponsor Afterburn whose manufacturer Aerotech also operates Dyuojet Far East for the marketing and servicing of Dynojets in this region. The dyno-check was part of a 'payment-in-kind' package for their advertisement here on TOVA.
The Dynojet measures power at the wheels which is the resultant power after losses incurred from engine ancillaries (like the air-cond compressor) and the gearbox. In this case, there are 3 main factors to note when looking at the result of the dyno-check. Firstly would be the rated max power of the K20A engine. This is spec'ed at 155ps as we already know. In terms of parastic power losses due to engine ancillaries, the EPS used on the 2.0l Civic is an advantage here because it does not require a hydraulic power steering pump to be driven by the engine. So instead of the usual 3, there are now only 2 devices attached to the engine - the alternator and the air-cond compressor. Then finally the 2.0l Civic only comes with a 5-speed GLC automatic gearbox which loses quite a bit of power when compared to the standard 5-speed manual gearbox or even the CVT as used on the Jazz and City.
First hand experience with non GLC equipped 4ATs used on older Hondas ranging from SOHC to full blown DOHC VTEC models have shown a good correlation for a general figure of around 30% power loss. I.e. dyno'ed power at the wheels on a Dynojet quite consistently comes out at 70% of that of the rated engine power for stock and almost stock examples. For more recent Honda models, those with auto gearboxes equipped with Grades Logic Control (GLC), the dyno-charts I have seen suggests a generally lower power loss. The new generation of Honda autoboxes seems to be more efficient and the figure is now generally around 25% or so. These figures however are for cars that are equipped with the usual ancillaries; alternator, power steering pump, and air-cond compressor. As noted, the 2.0l Civic uses an EPS and so has 1 less ancillary for the engine to power. Though I have not seen actual dyno-charts, I have been told by reliable enthusiasts that removal of the PS belt generally delivers around 2 to 3% higher power on the dyno. So I would think that this 'gain' will apply for the 2.0l Civic as well.
Finally there is the issue of the running-in of the engine. From extensive experience with a wide variety of Honda engines in the past, it seems that Honda engines needs a unusually large amount of time/mileage to run-in properly. The generally accepted run-in mileage for a new engine is 1,000km and indeed this figure was even quoted to me by a Honda R&D engineer. However, running-in is one thing but running-in till the engine delivers its rated power or better seems to require a much longer mileage for the case of Honda engines. My personal experience is that at least 5,000km of mileage is required before a Honda engine starts to deliver its spec'ed power rating and indeed many Honda engines seems to deliver their best only after 10,000km. In this sense, for a car magazine or web-site, there is a huge conflict between fighting to be 'first on the block' to get a full review of a new car out to the responsibility of the reviewer to ensure that any car reviewed must be given the best chances to show it's full potential. Fortunately for TOVA, the lack of advertiser considerations so far means that I can take my time and wait until the media cars rake up the proper amount of mileage before requesting for a loan. This however was not the case with this K20A Civic as I was eager to get an early review done due to its importance to us enthusiasts. Consequently, the test-car's mileage was barely over 2,700km when I took it for testing and when reading this review, readers would do well to bear this in mind constantly, i.e. whatever the results, chances are they will improve further once the car builds up more mileage.
Nevertheless, regardless of the mileage consideration, as far as expectations are concerned I was looking forward to the K20A Civic coming out with around 70+%, near 80% of the rated engine power on the Dynojet.The dyno-chart for the K20A Civic is published on the left. The most important figure would be the max-power and this comes out to around 120ps at the wheels or around 77.5% of the rated engine power. Amazingly this tallies very well to what was worked out above despite the car's relatively low mileage !
Taking a closer look at the dyno-chart, a most satisfying feature of the power curve is that it brings back the very familiar shape that is typical of the great DOHC-VTEC engines of old, especially the legendary 'B-series' engines. There is a very clear 'power hump' that starts at around 4800rpm, the 'VTEC changeover' point. This should give a clear 'VTEC rush' when VTEC activates the high cam profiles and is something Honda enthusiasts have grown to love and expect from Honda's performance models. Another much loved characteristic is the power curve hardly drops after peaking at the max-power point. The power curve clearly shows that the K20A engine will pull all the way to its redline and beyond, with a nice 'VTEC kick' after 4800rpm when the wild (intake) cams kicks in.
The welcome 'return back to basics' also applies to the engine note as well and the K20A screams nicely at WOT once VTEC opens the wild cams after 4800rpm. So what Kinoshita-san, the Honda R&D engineer told me about how this K20A engine regains the famous 'VTEC Roar' of the much-loved B-series engine is true after all. Of course nothing beats actually hearing the engine note itself and as usual, a video clip, now in WMV (Windows Media Video) format can be downloaded by clicking on the photo of the Civic on the right. So crank the volume of your multimedia speaker all the way up to listen to how the 2.0l Civic sounds when doing a WOT run on the Dynojet !
In terms of consistency, the K20A engine falls back a little. After the initial run shown here which delivered 120ps atw, the following 2 runs delivered around 119ps atw - dropping 1ps. And when we continued the dyno-runs after that, power started to drop even more. The 4th run delivered 118ps atw and subsequent runs after that sees further drop in the power curve. In this sense, the K20A engine does not seem to have the 'stamina' to generate consistently high power during prolonged runs. The logical conclusion would be that the engine overheats mildly when doing multiple consecutive runs and to test this out, we let the engine cool down for around 10 minutes and repeat the dyno-run again. We did this twice, doing more than 20 dyno-runs in total. Almost exactly the same results were repeated, the first run generating 120ps atw with the 2nd and 3rd runs at around 119ps atw and then subsequent runs seeing steady power drops. Recall that in the previous section I noted the Honda engineers did not upgrade the Civic's cooling system and that it is basically the same system for both the 1.7l and 2.0l variant. So it would seem quite clear here that the engine overheats mildly over prolonged WOT runs and this affects the max power output. As correlation, during the dyno-runs the radiator fan keeps cutting in very frequently and runs for long periods of time. So in this aspect, one of the first mods the enthusiast should consider for the 2.0l Civic would be to upgrade the radiator to a more efficient one or better still to consider the addition of a good quality oil cooler.
The other important observation from the dyno-check would be the general air-fuel ratio the K20A runs at. The AF chart is plotted below the power chart and it shows that the K20A runs mildly rich at WOT, with an AF of generally around 12 : 1. I think this is a result of the Honda engineers intentionally tuning the K20A to cater for general conditions around ASEAN, and especially for low grade fuel (down to RON91). From experience, Honda's DOHC VTEC and by inference the K20A DOHC i-VTEC engines generates most power with an AF nearer 13 : 1. So for Malaysia, where fairly high grade RON97 petrol is available all across the country, there is clearly more power to be squeezed from the K20A engine by tuning the AF ratio.
In absolute terms, 120ps atw is a very good figure for an auto gearboxed engine rated at 155ps. In comparisons with past Honda DOHC VTEC models, the EG9/EK4 B16A SiR autos which are rated at the same max power typically dyno's at 110-113ps atw. Indeed, even the DC2/DB8 B18C DOHC VTEC Integra SiR autos, which are rated at a much higher 170ps still delivered around 119ps or so atw on a Dynojet. In terms of comparison with non-Hondas, the very popular Proton Putra coupes and Satria GTi hot-hatches uses a 1.8l DOHC EFi engine rated at 140ps. Running with 5speed manual gearboxes even they too typically dyno's at ~115ps atw. So in comparison, it can be seen that the 2.0l Civic's dyno'ed power compares very well with competing performance models !
Since the dyno-runs are sponsored by Afterburn, I also requested a second set of dyno-runs for the 2.0l Civic with the proper amount of Afterburn added to the fuel tank. This is around 10% mixture ratio or 450ml of Afterburn to a full tank (45litres). While Afterburn works on both stock standard and modified cars, the one thing I have seen consistently is that it tends to deliver best results on engines that generally have 'high tuning potential'. In this sense, an engine that responds well to Afterburn will generally respond well to modifications as well. So this 2nd dyno-check will not only check the effectiveness of using Afterburn on the K20A Civic, it should also give us a good indicator to how 'tune-able' the K20A itself is.
The chart for this 2nd run is published on the left and the result is actually quite astonishing. With just a simple fuel additive added, the 2.0l Civic now generates almost 125ps atw, 5ps or 4% more power ! More impressive was how the extra power was generated all across the rpm range, and that the general profile of the power curve was preserved. Effectively, the entire power curve was moved up a few horses ! So Afterburn was very effective on the K20A engine and personally I think it also indicates the high tuning potential of the K20A as well. In terms of driving feel, addition of Afterburn really improved the throttle response of the engine, especially for partial throttle. There was a urge from the engine to surge forward even with light stabs at the throttle.
The Civic is an extremely important model to enthusiasts. Consequently we inherently have very high expectations from any variant that is tagged with the label 'sporty'. However, I always judge the performance of any car with proper considerations given to its design objective. In something as serious as passing judgement on a car's performance, making the effort to first understand its design objectives and then setting the right expectations is important to giving a balanced and fair review. Practically all cars will feature compromises and often a perculiar characteristic will become logical once one takes in consideration the intended target and usage. In the case of this K20A Civic, Honda engineers told me it's designed for 'performance with luxury'. So while I need to evaluate this Civic from the standard of an all out performance car, I must also be mindful that some aspects of its performance might be intentionally compromised for 'luxury'. I think is the best and fairest way to review this K20A Civic's performance.
The first thing I usually do after I take 'delivery' of a car from Honda is to gather impressions from general driving around town and the highways. Coming out from the Honda office building, I get onto a busy main road with plenty of slow moving traffic as well as several traffic lights. Then it's onto a major and often very packed highway. Driving in these conditions, the K20A's wide power band made its presence felt. When a car has good low-end torque, we can feel it most in stop and go, slow-moving 'sprint and brake', and moderately moving but heavily packed traffic conditions. Good torque makes itself felt by the eagerness of the car to shoot forward when we squeeze the pedal - the 'throttle response', i.e. how much pickup we get from varying amounts of throttle. If the car will only move to heavy throttle input, we label it 'sluggish' because psychologically we tie the pressure we put on the gas pedal to how much effort the engine takes to move the car. So if the car shoots forward to light stabs on the throttle, then we feel that the engine is 'powerful'.
'Powerful' is how the K20A Civic feels in normal driving conditions. It shoots forward nicely when we squeeze the throttle. Say the traffic is moving lazily along and finally the guy in front who have been dilly-dallying swerves off. Now a nice gap opens up to the next car quite a distance up ahead. The K20A Civic is 'powerful' enough to let me quickly eat up the gap before any other cars can make a move to cut in. Coming out from the Honda office, it is located on a side road and at the junction to the main road, I have to sprint across 2 lanes because I want to get on to the other side. Gaps in the on-coming traffic will be small and far in between because there are no traffic lights or junctions before and after, so traffic tends to spread out evenly and will be coming up at some speed, maybe as high as 70-80kph. In that circumstance, all I needed was maybe 4 or 5 car lengths of gap to get across with space to spare. When departuring from toll-gates, something Malaysians have more or less gotten used to doing several times a day, I can decide where to place the K20A Civic amongst the general accelerating traffic up ahead and then proceed to do so at will. In the process I can even slalom around slower moving vehicles without much concern if someone might be charging up faster behind me because there will usually be none. And all these without having to apply full throttle !
Coming to WOT runs, an engine that have good low-end or mid-range torque which gives a good initial 'pull' may not necessarily have 'stamina', i.e. the ability to sustain it's pull all the way to the redline without the initial pick-up tapering off. Honda enthusiasts used to Honda's legendary DOHC VTEC engines of the past are especially fussy about this ability. We are used to our VTEC engines pulling and pulling like there's no tomorrow and we tend to develop driving styles that exploits this ability - overtaking several cars in a go for e.g. Merging from a slow entry link into a fast moving highway is one situation which 'showcases' the desirability of this ability in a car. Under such situations, I would seek out a suitable gap in the incoming traffic and then go WOT match their speed. This will allow me to merge smoothly and effortlessly without disrupting the traffic flow. Instead of doing this however, some simply swerves out and then proceeds at their own pace and expect the traffic behind to slow down to accomodate. While traffic rules requires the rear coming traffic must slow down to accomodate, the thing is the incoming traffic might well be cruising steadily at 90-100kph all the while and suddenly this car cuts out into its path and struggles to pick-up speed to match them. So there will be a lot of heavy braking involved and this will have a chain effect all the way back. I think this is a very risky behaviour and I have seen more than one incident where accidents have resulted due to such bad driving moves. This is why standing start accelerations are important to enthusiasts and most of us actually enjoys the thrill making a WOT dash to pick up speed and merge into the incoming rear traffic (often even out-accelerating them).
While the K20A Civic responses eagerly to light prods at the throttle, the amount of pick-up does not increase linearly to throttle pressure. It tapers off quite a lot after half throttle. As a result, in WOT runs, the K20A Civic does not produce a strong push to the back. In this aspect, the 2.4l Accord actually had a better 'shove in the back' feeling despite its 200kg heavier bodyweight. This could well be due to the extra 400cc of displacement in the engine though I would say it's more because the K24A is tuned to deliver very good low-end at the detriment of its high-end. The K20A on this Civic however is tuned to deliver a flat and very consistent torque across the rpm range. So the engine does not deliver a strong shove at WOT but instead pulls steadily and consistently until the red-line and with a nice discernible surge coming in after 4800rpm. This is the satisfying VTEC-like pull that we all love and this acceleration is accompanied by a very nice VTEC roar as well. So good news then, the K20A on this Civic works very much like the DOHC VTEC engines of old !
Personally, my biggest expectation from a 'sporty' car is on its acceleration ability. I have a sort of a 'point and shoot' style of driving. When I want to overtake the car in front of me, I just look patiently for a clear space, point the car and ram the throttle. The amount of acceleration I can muster means the overtaking manuevre will be over in a few short seconds and I don't have to worry if another car might swerve out and block my path or if I run out of road. Even if the guy in front decides to be nasty and picks up speed, he usually can't cut me off because he just won't be fast enough. When merging from a slow moving entry point into a fast moving highway, I want to be able to do so casually and without any drama.
So in this sense, for any car that is tagged as 'sporty', I would expect it to allow me to do these to some degree. Certainly I do not expect to make a big fuss just to overtake a car cruising at 60kph. Of all the cars in Honda Malaysia's local line-up, only the Accord 3.0l V6 VTEC allowed me to drive in a roughly similar manner. The 2.4l Accord and now this K20A Civic allows it to some degree too. With both these cars, I can drive in the 'point and shoot' manner but I still need to exercise caution to avoid cars that might decide to swerve out into my path or that I'll run out of road because I took too long. One sad thing was the ES-Civic do not seem to command the respect that the Civic used to. While previous generation Civics were respected as fast cars, the couple of times that I was genuinely in a hurry, few cars bothered to give way to a charging ES-Civic that looms up quickly in their rear view mirror. And the biggest blow to my pride (or rather the Civic's pride) was when this 850cc Kancil (very popular local 'K-car' slightly bigger than the size of a Mini Minor) fitted with a loud exhaust actually decided to have a 'go' at me, by swerving aside and then attempting to out-drag me to the next traffic lights ! I showed it a clean pair of heels of course and I think the driver saw the red 2.0l iVTEC badge and then realised his mistake but still the fact that he decided to give it a go when it was clearly a Honda Civic that is bugging him to give way was not a good show of level of regard the general road users now have for the Civic.
The gear ratios of the 2.0l Civic has been the subject of much discussion amongst the more technically oriented enthusiasts. As discussed previously, the gear ratios are distributed rather strangely. 1st, 2nd & 3rd are high and set relatively far apart while the ratios for 3rd, 4th and 5th are rather low, below 1.0 and with values very near each other. It is only after actually driving the K20A Civic for a good deal of time that the rationale Honda engineers used to derive the gear ratios will become apparent. The key to understanding the rationale again lies in the design objective for the 2.0l Civic, i.e. performance with luxury. In this case, after extensive driving and careful observation of the Civic's performance, it became clear that the 5 gears in the K20A Civic's gearbox is more or less divided into 2 distinct 'sets'.
The first set is gears 1, 2 and 3. These 3 gears are clearly designed for hard driving around town, for rapid pick-up and for overtaking cars. Coupled with the very high final drive ratio, 1st and 2nd gear gives the K20A Civic a strong performance especially for WOT charges in the slower moving traffic conditions of town driving. The large gaps between these 3 gears also mean gear-shifts, eventhough smooth are very obvious because of the large change in pick-up as well as the loudness of the engine. The thing is 'luxury' or not, these things will not be of any concern when all we care about is being as fast as possible. 3rd gear is such that by the time we reach the engine's redline of around 7000rpm, the K20A Civic would be charging at suicidal speeds for town and actually even highway driving as well. So 1st, 2nd, and at the most 3rd would be what we will be using when we want to go as fast a possible in town driving or in slower moving traffic or in twisty roads.
The second set of gears are 3rd, 4th and 5th, what many people calls the 'overdrive' gears. This set is clearly set for high-speed cruising along expressways or easy light throttle driving around town. The main characteristic now is the relatively low ratios and consequently the gaps between each gear is very small too. This lets the engine spin along quietly at low rpms and there is very little change in engine rpm or relative change in acceleration between the gears. The idea would be to make the already smooth gearshifts almost imperceptible and to accentuate the 'luxurious' aspect of the driving. So when cruising lazily in 5th on the highway for e.g. and there's a little bit of urgency in overtaking the car in front, a small squeeze of the throttle will cause a downshift to 4th. This gear change is practically imperceptible but once in 4th, the car will have a slightly better pick-up. Once the overtaking is completed, ease back on the throttle and the gearbox shifts up to 5th and again this is again practically imperceptible since the engine revs hardly changes and there's practically no change in the engine sound as well. So the whole thing gets done with minimal fuss and the driver sits blissfully relaxed behind the steering wheel all the time. But because of the very high final drive ratio, high speed cruising is still effortless and the K20A Civic will thunder down the expressways at breakneck speeds. 160kph comes without any sense of effort and indeed one needs to be mindful because even 200kph arrives without any drama at all.
I am quite confident this is the reason for the rather unusual selection of the individual gear ratios and the final drive ratio. And as if to emphasize these 2 distinct sets of gears, the gearbox on the K20A Civic has a 'D' gate (for 5 gears driving) and a 'D3' gate (for 3 gears driving). So I think the idea of the Honda engineers is for K20A Civic drivers to engage D3 if they want to drive very fast but to get back into D5 for a relaxed 'luxurious' cruising.
![]() |
![]() |
Now to the area of handling. The front and rear suspensions have very different settings. The front suspension is very stiff and the rear relatively soft. As a set, the suspension offers controlled compressions with a strong rebound. This is fine on relaxed cruising on good condition roads but on roads with undulations which dips and rises like a roller coaster, the car can feel like a boat on rough water as it floats and rocks along the uneven surface. The suspension actually feels like it's too soft and the rear is also very lively. As a result eventhough the car's basic character when cornering at the limits is mild understeer, when doing high-speed driving along twisty and bumpy roads the overly lively rear causes the rear tyres too unload too much and the tail might come loose and swing around, causing the car to 'over'-steer. The lively rear is felt more by the back passenger than by the two in the front. I don't know if this might also be due to the heavier front bias on the car, with the heavier K20A engine. Honda engineers did not cater for the extra weight in the front except through the setting of the suspension - the spring rate and shock rates only and also an adjustment of the anti-roll bars. In this aspect, fast driving in uneven twisties on the K20A Civic is constrained quite a lot by the limited handling ability. In fact, I feel the 1.7l version actually has a better, sportier suspension and feels and drives faster on uneven twisty roads !
But things are very different on under favourable road conditions however. I had the unique opportunity to take the K20A Civic for two laps on the Sepang F1 Circuit and here the K20A Civic really impressed me with its speed. Despite being handicapped by the stock tyres, the K20A Civic still negotiated turns 1 & 2 at 50kph without feeling as if it'll roll over its side. At the two long straights, I was pleasantly surprised to be able to exceed 160kph just after passing the 200m braking marker. And all these was with two adults in the car and with the air-conditioning switched on though with a near empty tank. My friend who is a regular on the SIC, went alone and with the air-cond off and he told me he exceeded 165kph at the 150m marker. For a 1260kg car using an auto gearbox and with 'only' 155ps, I thought the K20A Civic showed itself very well indeed.
This 'jekyl and hyde' handling character of the K20A Civic had me baffled for a long time. Honda is highly respected for their suspension tuning so I am very certain that the handling characteristic of the K20A Civic was intentionally designed to be that way. But why did Honda engineers choose to do so ? It is after the 'serious' phase in testing the car's performance is over, when I decided to settle down to just enjoy driving the K20A Civic that I finally found out why. This was on the penultimate day and as I cruise lazily along the highway at speeds of between 100-130kph, the environment was serene and relaxed, totally stress free. The road condition was generally good, with the occasional rise and dips and the K20A Civic handles them with great control and poise and with hardly any feeling from the driver's seat. The K20A Civic soared and floated along the highway and only really got caught wrong footed on very occasional badly spaced undulations. It was very clear to me then that this was what the K20A Civic's suspension was intentionally designed to do - cruise in D5 at high speed and with great poise, overtake with total ease and offer a relaxed comfortable and luxurious ride. But do not let this 'softie' characteristic mislead you though. As I have found out for myself from the 2 laps around the Sepang circuit, the K20A Civic performs very well when the road conditions are favourable !
To complement this high-speed cruising ability, the Civic's sound insulation is good enough to keep out much of the outside noise so I could drive in great comfort and elegance. This is usually judged by how much of the outside traffic noise that gets filtered in as well as the wind noise during high speed cruising. Often we make subjective judgement based on how loud we have to raise our voice to talk or the volume setting on the radio. When I rate the Civic's sound insulation as 'good enough', I based it on the fact that the noise of motor-bikes and lorries and buses do not interfere into our ability to talk at normal voice. And the volume control on the radio is never raised very high for comfortable listening. I forgot how much the indicator on the LCD display shows but it was usually put at not much more than 1/3 to 2/5 of a turn from minimum. So inside, the car is quiet and the ride also very nice, the leathered interior offering a nice feeling of class and luxury - again clearly a concious design approach.
In terms of the subjective driving feel, the general feeling of the steering is that the EPS has very strong assist. Very little effort is required to steer the car. I think this is again probably a result of the 'luxury performance' approach as it allows the driver to cruise around lazily without much effort needed to work the steering wheel, perhaps with 1 hand on the steering and the other on the gearstick or even the habit of some to rest both hands on top of the steering wheel (without actually gripping it). Actually I feel this is a bad habit and one should have both hands holding the steering wheel in the '10-2' position as much as possible, but that's my personal opinion and my observations is that most drivers of luxury vehicles tend to drive with the 1-hand method or with the hands lazily resting on top and working the steering. So I guess the light feeling of the EPS steering would be intentional due to the Civic's design objective.
The weakest component in the Civic however is most definitely the tyres. The K20A Civic comes supplied with Goodyear Eagle NCT-5 tyres. In general, they are competant tyres but I feel they are more skewed towards providing a comfortable ride than outright performance. They certainly squeals very easily and are actually quite scary on wet roads and it feels as if the car will slip off the road at the slightly dab of the brakes or even when cornering at very low speeds. So while they are sufficient for the original intended usage of the K20A Civic, I personally feel more 'sporty' tyres will improve the handling of the K20A Civic significantly. There are many good performance tyres around and Goodyear themselves has them as well for e.g. Goodyear F1 GSD3.
At the end of the review 'tenure', I was actually very happy. After my preview of the K20A Civic, the two biggest 'headache' are its gear ratio and its handling. Frankly I was dissapointed at these two items and I just couldn't figure out what was going on in Honda's mind when they set-up the K20A Civic in this way. But I am very happy that in the proper review I found out what I believe to be the real reasons for these two characteristics.
After saying all the things above, the most important tests still remains the actual timed performance tests I would conduct using my GTech Pro. This then is a totally objective evaluation of the (straight-line) performance abilities of the K20A Civic. Any car's acceleration capability is intimately tied to it's power to weight relationship. In order to have a good and well-balanced acceleration ability, a car must have a low weight to power (especially power atw) ratio. It means that each ps of engine power needs to lug around less weight. This means either a very powerful engine used with a very efficient gearbox, or a very light bodyweight or ideally both. Traction (controlled by tyre grip levels), overall weight balance, and the number of gears and their ratios also influences to some degree. But the key factor still remains the car's weight to power (atw) ratio. This basic requirement for good weight to power ratio is dictated by physical law and there's simply no other way around it. These principles even governs all forms of racing and everyone has to work with them, from the millions of people doing drag racing right up to the pinnacle of motorsports like F1 and GT car racing. This is why teams and racers are always looking for more power and why race cars are always stripped to their bare chassis and usually features exotic materials for their strength and lightness.
In this respect, the K20A Civic satisfies the pre-requisites which are necessary for very good acceleration times. Its raw weight to power ratio of 8.0 is the second highest in the entire Honda Malaysia line-up, behind only the 240ps Accord 3.0l V6. Eventhough it uses the regular torque-converter auto gearbox, it still delivers a good amount of it's rated 155ps to the wheels. It's weight to power ratio beats practically all of its immediate competitors and it will very likely outperform them as well. The car will lose out in traction being FF in configuration and also because frankly the tyres are not really up to par. But nevertheless, even before I started the GTech Pro tests, I was already very confident that the K20A Civic will deliver better times than the 9.6 seconds Honda quoted for it in the 0-100kph dash.
As with the case with it's 1.7l sibling, the 5AT on this K20A Civic lends itself well to launching. There is no real need to pre-tension the gearbox. All I needed to do was to hold the car stationary with the left foot on the brake pedal, lightly squeeze the throttle and then simultaneously go WOT while quickly lifting my left foot off the brake pedal. As usual, launching is limited by the grip of the front tyres and in this aspect, It was too easy to spin the tyres on launching with the result that most launches were conducted at less than optimum engine rpms. The engine seems to bog mildly initially but picks up quickly after that.
When doing the timed runs, the dual mode character of the K20A engine is not very obvious. First gear pulls relatively well and this hides the increased pull after the 4800rpm changeover point. Again, the 2.0l Civic subjectively seems to pull less than the K24A Accord despite it's better power to weight ratio. Changing from 1st gear to 2nd drops the engine revs from the redline of around 7000rpm right down to around 4800rpm, just nicely into the high cams portion of the power band. As a result, the K20A Civic pulls very evenly and cleanly once it has gotten away after the launch. The broad power band of the K20A shows up nicely in the 0-60mph sprint results. Charted on the left, we can clearly see that the K20A Civic will do the 60mph dash in just over 8.5 seconds, 0.1 seconds faster than the K24A Accord and way faster than it's D17A sibling.
In the case of the quarter mile runs, as charted on the left again, the K20A Civic does it very consistently between 16.5 to 16.65 seconds. In this case, the very even distribution of all 10 runs suggests that we can use the averaged value of ~16.6 seconds as the K20A Civic's 'rated' quarter mile performance. Again this is over 0.1 seconds faster than the K24A Accord. The run finishes in 3rd gear and terminal speed is a very high 80mph or around 150kph. The quarter mile comes up with engine revs quite a distance away from the 7000rpm redline actually. In fact, during my 2 laps around the Sepang circuit, I was using D3 all the time and 160kph and beyond was actually achieved while still in 3rd gear. So all these correlates very well to my observations that the first 3 gears are designed for maximum performance, all out driving.
So as the results show clearly, the K20A Civic is easily the fastest local Honda model I have tested so far. It is faster than the K24A Accord and is probably the second fastest model in the entire local line-up, with only the 240ps 3.0l V6 Accord as theoretically having any chance of beating its time. It easily beats the D17A Civic which was my 'reference point' for Honda's mid-sized executive models' performance without breaking into a sweat. Consequently this K20A Civic will now become my new 'reference point' for the performance of Honda's mid-sized executive models and indeed for all Honda's 'sporty-models'.
The results of the 60-0mph braking tests are shown on the chart on the left. For this test, tyre grip is the biggest determinant to 'performance' and personally I feel the K20A Civic is severely limited by the relatively low grip of its standard tyres here. It was simply too ridiculously easy to lock up the tyres and activate the ABS. It is important to brake right at the limit of the tyre's grip, but this happens way too early, with too light braking effort. I think this can be clearly seen from the results. All runs were completed between 141 to 144 feet and they are also very consistently distributed. In fact, I found it extremely tough to dip below 140feet during the tests and the best result I ever achieved was a miserable 139feet. While 139feet might be considered 'pretty good' for the typical passenger sedan, it can at best be judged as barely acceptable for the case of this K20A Civic, given it's position as a 'sports sedan'. I personally expected much better results than this.
The brake pedal is another problem area. Just like the case with the 1.7l Civic, the pedal is really too 'soft' and 'spongy' in that it is just not firm enough to resist strong pressure from the right foot, sinking almost right to the floor when pressed hard. The brake pads also requires warming up which is very surprising. When there is a need to brake hard a short while after starting up the car, it can be quite alarming as the Civic will continue to roll forward even with the brake pedal quite far down towards the floor. However, once the brakes have warmed up, it bites pretty well and hard braking even from high speeds can be done with an acceptable level of confidence. Surprisingly, the brake pedal also firms up considerably after hard driving. It's as if the high vacumn generated when lifting off the throttle at high engine revs actually helps increase the boost from the vacumn assist. In terms of brake feel, it was possible to modulate the brake pedal to a degree but really the initial bite of the brakes is much too vague and weak and they bite too suddenly to afford any real proper control of the braking. In this sense, I felt that the braking performance of the 2.0l Civic, while sufficient for the power and speed of the car, can really do with some modifications.
It took fifteen long years but it's finally here, the Honda Civic 'SiR' has arrived on our shores. And the wait is well worth it ! Even if the basic car may have gotten 'softened' a bit in the process but fellow TOVA'ers, make no mistake, this still is a very fast vehicle ! More importantly, what we now have is the most technologically advanced Civic sedan ever sold in this region. While it's raw performance may not surpass the Civic SiRs that were sold in Singapore, Brunei and selected countries previously, it showcases state-of-the-art technologies even beyond those cars : the new K-series DOHC i-VTEC engine, a 5-speed GLC gearbox with progressive shift, Electrical Power Steering, and more. And with all the important specs that used to be options (ABS, EBD, dual-SRS). It is far and away the most advanced car in its market segment today and personally for me, only really lacks a sequential shifter for the auto, and a manual gearbox option, though personally a harder-core sportier tune would be welcomed too.
For Honda Malaysia at least, this K20A Civic sedan is their first salvo to re-establish Honda's sporty reputation and regain our respect here in Malaysia (and hopefully soon for the rest of the region) and in my eyes at least, they have succeeded. And they have big plans for this Civic, including racing it in professional races. And after that ? I can assure enthusiasts that more is being planned for the future. So enthusiasts, let's rejoice, for after so many long years, the Civic has finally returned !
Wong KN
July 2004
© Temple of VTEC Asia
Performance Results & Technical Specifications : Civic 2.0 i-VTEC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|