If ever you were to get excited about a Honda station wagon, this may be your one, rare, opportunity. Honda have tried to enhance the humble Civic recipe with a new vehicle they are calling the Civic Tourer. It made its Concept debut at the recently-held Geneva Motor Show and essentially what it is, is an estate version of the Honda Civic Hatch, and it should be unveiled in production form, at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September.
Honda has confirmed that the vehicle will use the name ‘Civic Tourer’ when it goes on sale in early 2014. Whether it will make it to estate-weary South Africa is still unclear. It will, however, be manufactured in Honda’s Swindon plant in the U.K. Shown here in the latest spy pictures, the test mule shows how reassuringly close the Civic Tourer is to the eye-catching concept shown.
The rear wheel-arch surfacing and rear wing have been toned down, but the vehicle clearly retains the futuristic shape of the concept. The butch shoulder-line is still there, as are the swept-back tail-lights, sloping roofline and small spoiler. The Civic Tourer builds on the styling of the existing Civic Hatch, adding an enlarged rear storage space, along with a unique D-pillar design and new tail-lights. As a ‘concept’, the Tourer also showed off large alloy wheels and a bevy of LED lighting at both ends.
The concept’s neat roof rails have also made it onto the final production model, while the production car does inevitably ditch the concept’s centre exhaust layout. No stowage capacity figures are available yet, but Honda does say the Tourer will have ‘class-leading cargo space’. Engine wise, we can expect the recently launched 1.6-litre i-DTEC diesel, and a low CO2 figure as a result. Also likely is the more powerful 2.2-litre diesel, plus the ubiquitous 1.8-litre petrol engine.