Car Review: Honda CR-V Hybrid – ugly but a smooth operator

Honda’s luxury compact SUV has all the bells and whistles the modern driver could ask for, says Sean O’Grady... but it would still lose a beauty contest with its 1975 predecessor

The CR-V stands out from the crowd, albeit for the wrong reasons (Pictures by Honda)

It was entirely right and fitting that I arrived at a recent motor industry event to celebrate the four decades of advances in car design in a Honda CR-V. Organised by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the attending journalists were reminded of the extent of such progress with displays and drives of cars old and new. Thus Honda brought along a 1975 Civic, one of the first cars and the one that, much changed, is still in production today.

That original Civic had a choke to help you start up (it manually increased the flow of petrol to a cold engine), it boasted a push-button radio with manually operated aerial, a heater and, er, that was about it in those days.

(Honda)

The CR-V, by contrast, embodied almost all of the features new car buyers four decades on take blissfully for granted. And that is a lot of gear. The Honda is a luxury compact SUV, for example, with four-wheel drive, a type of car unknown back then. It is a petrol-electric hybrid, comprising a petrol engine, electric motor, lithium ion battery pack, regenerative braking and complex electronics to make the whole package work seamlessly.

It has a GPS satnav, of course; airbags; reversing cameras; anti-lock braking; electronic stability control; automatic braking and cruise control; blind spot and collision warnings; heated seats and steering wheel; Bluetooth Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, allowing drivers to safely access music, maps and services via their smartphones. Forty years ago you had to wait six months for the Post Office to come round and instal a landline. There you go.

(Honda)

And all for £37,305, which, in real terms, is only about twice the cost of that little ’75 Civic, though the new car is vastly safer, greener and faster than its ancestor.

Still, not everything can be counted unalloyed progress. Not every car made nowadays is more attractive than its predecessors, and, to me, this is certainly true of the Honda CR-V. The original bright yellow Seventies Civic I recently drove was cute, neat, perfectly proportioned and pleasing to look at. The CR-V isn’t. It has an almost wilful, defiant ugliness about it that I assume must be deliberate. It is in an extremely crowded sector of the market, almost as crowded as a Tory leadership election, another mixed ability class.

The spec

Honda CR-V Hybrid 4WD

Price: £27,345 (as tested; starts at £25,390)
Engine: 2.0 4-cylinder petrol + electric motor; CVT auto
Power output (kW@rpm): 107@6,500
Top speed (mph): 124
0 to 60 (secs): 8.8
Fuel economy (mpg): 51.4​
CO2 emissions (g/km): 126 

The Honda is up against capable opposition such as the Mazda CX-5, Peugeot 5008, Toyota RAV4 (also available as a hybrid), Citroen C5 Aircross, VW Tiguan and Kia Sportage, among many, many others. It does some things better than most of them (eg reliability), and some things worse (eg as a driver’s car), but it is not any kind of a class winner, as indeed none of them are. But its weird lines, animalistic “face” featuring a glossy dark chrome panel, and mismatch of curves and creases seem only to have the advantage of making the CR-V stand out from the crowd, albeit for the wrong reasons. That bluff face and awkward lines might also be the cause of a bit of wind noise at speed.

(Honda)

It is much the same inside – not quite good enough. The fake wood veneer on the dash and centre console, ironically enough, looks like the sort of excess that you’d have found in a car from the decade that taste supposedly forgot. The CR-V’s roomy interior is a perfectly comfortable place to be, calming even, though the touchscreen is a touch small by contemporary standards. That plastic wood, though… what were they thinking?

(Honda)

The other defining characteristic of the Honda is its extreme smoothness, that being a trait in the brand’s products since its earliest days. They have, for example, re-invented the gear change, so that you need only press a button to put the automatic box into drive, and another to make it more sporty. It’s a constant velocity type (CVT), which means that there is only one gear, and usually these are whiny noisy affairs; the Honda’s is that too, but is the least fussy of the CVTs I have encountered.

(Honda)

The suspension has nice soft settings, and the seats are supportive and the interior materials, fake wood aside, well chosen. Normally a five-seater model, there’s a seven-seater version available for the Rees-Moggs and other fast breeders, by the way.

So that is the Honda CR-V then: clever, and a smooth-but-ugly/ugly-but-smooth operator. Basically a fat dolphin. If you don’t care about looks, you could do a lot worse.