#HondaCivic

Honda has sent us a teaser pic of the 2022 Honda Civic hatchback, seen above, but buried in a press release that’s mostly filled with the usual P.R. spin is this nugget: “An available, fun-to-drive 6-speed manual transmission.”

Yep, the stick ain’t totally dead yet.

Leaked photos show the pricing for the upcoming 2022 Honda Civic.

Oh, and the on-sale date, too.

The 2022 Honda Civic sedan has finally arrived, donned in conservative body panels that make the automobile come across as more attractive and adult than its predecessor. While the tenth-generation model had a lot going for it, its appearance was quite polarizing. Honda designers created an angular buffet that made every Civic look as though it had been customized inside a videogame where caricatures of gearheads argue with each other about who will become the local street racing champ.

It was perhaps too exciting for a vehicle that’s primarily designed for mundane tasks, which is why Honda ran in the complete opposite direction with the eleventh generation. Reminiscent of the straightforward fifth-generation model, the newest Civic boasts the cleanest bodywork we’ve seen in decades and will provide a significant amount of wiggle room for designers to better differentiate performance variants.

Here’s your first official look at the 2022 Honda Civic.

And like a kid getting to open one Christmas present a little early, that’s it, that’s all you get. You’ll have to wait two whole weeks to get the rest.

The last time your humble scribe traveled on an airplane to test drive a new car in some location that is “not here” was just over a year ago. That vehicle was the Honda CR-V Hybrid.

While in Tucson, Honda reps told us to keep an eye on our inboxes for an upcoming drive of the updated Civic Type R. This raised my eyebrows, as I knew the changes to the Type R for 2020 were fairly mild, though they did promise some improvements to the already excellent driving dynamics.

The first-generation Honda Civic sold very well in the United States, but it’s just about impossible to find early examples in junkyards these days; I’ve managed to photograph a few ’78s for this series and that’s it. Why? The cars in rust-prone areas dissolved quickly and those in low-corrosion regions got driven to death well before the beginning of our current century. Here’s the oldest discarded 1973-1979 Civic I’ve managed to find since at least the late 2000s.

While the Honda Civic Sedan Prototype we saw last year was already a shoo-in for the production model, there’s always a chance that the brand will go against its own instincts and try to dazzle us with something that’s never coming to market. But it’s one of those “snowball in hell” kind of deals.

In addition to Honda being ultra-consistent and delivering prototypes that actually represent for-sale models, an example of the 2022 model year Civic leaked in China and we doubt the company has any intention of redoing the exterior just to surprise our market.

A 2022 Honda Civic Hatchback test mule was spotted in Columbus, Ohio, sporting some of the most unnecessarily aggressive automotive camouflage in recent memory. But the thick black cladding wasn’t enough to mask what the 11th Gen Civic Forum immediately identified as a rear spoiler.

Historically, most of Honda’s design previews have been so close to the finished product that most of us don’t even bother referencing them as concept vehicles anymore. They’re akin to a final draft with a few embellishments that are likely to be toned down before anything hits the assembly line. But the 11th-generation Civic Sedan Concept came out looking like a Honda’s attempt at building the Volkswagen Jetta, leaving the manufacturer with a shortage of radical design cues to scale back.

As Toyota approached the launch of the all-new, 2018 Toyota Camry in mid-2017, the automaker telegraphed its intentions very plainly.

“I think you’re going to see the entire sedan market pick up,” then vice-president Jack Hollis said. “We want the new Camry to rehabilitate the segment,” Toyota’s Moritaka Yoshida said at the time.

Toyota wasn’t alone.

“I don’t expect to sell fewer Accords in 2018 with this great new product,” Honda’s sales vice-president, Ray Mikiciuk, said later on in 2017. Accord sales fell 10 percent in 2018 before sliding 8 percent in 2019.

One year later, Nissan’s Dennis Le Vot worked up to the launch of the 2019 Altima by suggesting that when it comes to passenger car market share: “We think 30 percent is the bottom.” Passenger car market share fell below 30 percent in 2019, the new Altima’s first full year.

Now we’re months away from the arrival of the 11th-generation Honda Civic. You know the drill: major automaker launches major car nameplate, major automaker suggests car market will stop the free-fall, major automaker hypes possibility of car market healing.

We’re skeptical.

We told you last week that the eleventh-generation of the Honda Civic would be shown on streaming service Twitch, and lo and it behold, it was on Tuesday night.

At least in prototype form.

We showed you what the next-generation Honda Civic hatchback might look like, based on patent filings unearthed by one of our forums, yesterday, and now our corporate friends have the sedan renders.

Renderings of the 11th-generation Honda Civic Hatchback have hit the forums, thanks to Honda patent filings, and the changes are minor but give the car a far milder look.

The biggest difference upfront is a narrower grille combined with a larger lower front fascia, basically a flip-flop of the current car.

Honda, perhaps taking a cue from domestic manufacturers, has decided to diminish its passenger car ranks.

Reported today by Automotive News, the automaker has decided to discontinue the Honda Fit in the U.S., while also killing off the Honda Civic coupe and ending manual transmission availability in the Accord.

The Honda Civic Type R isn’t exactly subtle.

Its boy-racer styling and big wing announce its presence and mission with authority. It’s as if Honda is saying, “Hey, you want subtlety in a hi-po Civic? Get a Si.” Note: The Si is easily identifiable because of a spoiler of its own, albeit one that’s far less ostentatious.

If the current Type R doesn’t exactly blend, what does one make of the rumors swirling across the Internets this morning?