you guys generally seem to think the Civ is more economical, I had one for a week and couldnt beleive how thirsty it was - I really dont think youd notice the difference in the 2

 

The Civic is more economical than the Impreza, but not by loads. I got around 23mpg out of my UK MY99 Impreza Turbo, and around 26mpg out of the Civic.

Having said that, the Civic's best is 34mpg and the Scoob never broke 28mpg, so if you want to do an economy run, at least the Civic will slurp juice more slowly.

 

Don't you just love the way dealers show off and drive badly to scare you, if they're demonstrating cars like the CTR, Scoob etc. As if that's going to make you buy it.

I had 3 test drives of the CTR before signing up; first one was with the dealer, but the second time he just chucked the keys at my wife and me, and told us to come back with it when we wanted. Which was nice (and that was in Feb, when demand still greatly exceeded supply).

 

what are they "freely available now?"

I can remember when the clio 172 came out, the list was 6 months.

now that everyones got em, the car supermarkets have abot 200 each, can we expect the same for the Civ?

 

John, I got the demo arranged through the company I work for. They deal with our fleet management department who sort the test drive out. The girl I ended up speaking to from Honda worked in their corporate demonstartion department I think. It came from a fleet of demo vehicles somewhere in High Wycombe apparently. It could well be something to with insurance - I was driving the car on my company insurance and so they don't need to worry about huge bills on that front I guess.
I got the same message as you when I popped in as a punter to my local Honda dealer. I can't wait to back and see the look on the juped up little tw@@s face when he realises he's lost out on all that commission. I see it going a bit like this.
Me - I'd like you to set up an account to service my new CTR
Honda - Certainly sir, no problem. Where did you buy it?
Me - X Honda dealer
Honda - Why didn't you come to us then?
Me - Because one of your sales people said I'd got more chance of winning the lottery than getting a test drive in your demo car. Otherwise I would happily have come here. I'm just hoping your service department take any of my enquiries a little more seriously than he did.

Sorry - I'm in one of those moods today.

 

The Civic's not freely available like the Clio 172 (particularly not on import, which is still a 5-6 month wait). However, dealers have been ordering their entire allocation of CTRs even if they haven't got orders from customers, so if you find a dealer in an area populated by old people, they're likely to have cars in stock, and I've even heard of discounts up to £300 (that's three hundred pounds, wow!) on them.

Freely available? Sort of, if you shop around.

 

Nick L - the windows arent supposed to go UP on auto, only down...sort of helps in the rare case of getting your/someone elses head, hand, leg(!) etc in the window as its shuts...

 

Nick - where are you from? (or more prcisely, where is the CTR from?)

A couple of months ago I went for a 20 minute test drive in a CTR with the dealer but said that there was no way that I was buying a car without a test drive on my own for as long as possible - AT least an afternoon I told him.

But he said that the best he (and any Honda dealer, as far as he knew) could do was an hour long extended test drive but still with the dealer.

I am a little young perhaps but still....I wouldnt need it for a week (althoug that would be great) I just need a few hours in it on my own so that I can have a proper fiddle and nose about.

Its not necessarily to razz around - the dealer scared the pants off me with his driving anyway and positively encouraged me to cane it. The only good thing about the hour long accompanied test drive was that he said that he would take me to a stretch of M-way where he knoew there were no camera and he had had it up to and indicated 140.....

[Edited by JohnMcC - 7/11/2002 3:53:42 PM]