The redesigned, 2012 Honda Civic has gotten a lukewarm, if not outright hostile, reception from critics (ourselves among them). So when our colleagues at Automotive News reported that American Honda Motor’s executive vice president John Mendel suggested that the Civic’s first mid-cycle update could be moved ahead in response to the criticism (from spring 2014 to sometime in 2013), we did some digging to see what that meant.
Honda spokesman Chris Martin confirmed that AN quoted Mendel accurately when he said, “We take feedback seriously, regardless of who it’s from, and we will act accordingly quickly,” but that no one at Honda has given any specific timeline. “When we launch a model, one or two model changes are always planned,” said Martin. “On some models, we can move that forward or move that back. There is the potential with Civic that we would move that forward. It is not unprecedented.”
That said, Martin went on to explain that advancing the first mid-cycle update is a way of saying, ”Hey, we hear you. We’re going to do what is appropriate.” Exactly what might this early update involve? Martin declined to say, but we hope it goes beyond changes to the head- and taillamp bezels and involves some big upgrades in interior materials.
While the Civic has had a tough time in the hands of critics, Martin stopped short of admitting that the Civic is having problems pleasing customers, adding that, following the natural disasters that struck Japan earlier this year, the Civic has only had full model and feature availability for a couple of weeks. “The big thing is that Civic as it stands hasn’t gotten a chance to get on its feet from an inventory standpoint . . . do we consider Civic to be a problem or a failure? I’d say no, not at this point.”
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