Engine (Winner: Toyota Corolla Altis 1.8G)
Score Card: Civic (1), Corolla Altis (2)

What? The Honda Civic loses despite having a 130-bhp 1.6-liter VTEC-3 engine?  On paper, the Honda Civic’s power plant looks so good that you’d be willing to spend the night with it. However, in reality, it’s not that great.  It can perform, but we expected a more lively performance from a 3-stage VTEC. 

The problem with the VTEC power plant is that it needs to be revved hard to gain some degree of acceleration and power.  As a result, the engine doesn’t feel relaxed—it’s as if it always has to be on its toes on every stretch of highway waiting for the gasoline pedal to be floored.  The newly reprogrammed transmission and engine combination is miles ahead of the previous Civic, but it still has a long way to go to become a refined-enough motor to be used for a relaxed cruising environment. 

At start-up the VTEC-3 engine sounds like a sardine can—as if reminding the owner: don’t push me above 5,000-rpm today, please.  After it warms up, punch it and the VTEC-3 can still generate that racing-engine soundtrack at higher revs.   Because of the heavy acceleration and high revs involved, don’t expect to do 49 kilometers per liter in everyday city driving.  During our test, we only squeezed out 7.28 km/L, a figure similar to a 2.0-liter Toyota RAV4 or even an eleven-year old Galant GTi! 

If the Civic’s VTEC engine sounds like a boy racer, the Corolla’s 145-bhp VVTi is perfect for a small-sized luxo-cruiser.  It performs straight off the line only marginally better than the smaller- displacement Civic engine (if you push them to the edge, the Civic actually does better), but it’s in the area of refinement that the Corolla wins out. 

It is the perfect companion to comfort you after a long day’s work at the office—smooth, consistent, barely audible.  Think of it as the mechanical version of Louie Armstrong singing the blues, though its voice may crack up if you crank it past 5000 rpm.  It prefers to sing in the lower range, thank you very much.  In addition, the transmission is a perfect match for the engine’s character.  It shifts at a lower RPM range giving the Corolla a decisive advantage in fuel economy: around 8 km/L.

The Corolla’s extra displacement also offers more low-end grunt than the Civic making overtaking and highway cruising an easier task for the Toyota than the Honda.

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