Read the notes on the side bar, especially those for "Handling". If thats what they consider handling, their readers must be the Camry crowd.

http://www.newcars.com/reviews/honda...hatchback.html

 

Haha yeah that's a pretty useless review. Not only handling, pretty much all other notes are just off.

 

Sigh, the sad state of "car reviews" in the age of electronic media.

Assignment: "take these two spec sheets, gimme 1000 words comparing them by lunchtime, boss said we hadta finish all the Hondas today".

So someone did, apparently. From my quick skim, nothing led me to believe the author laid eyes on either vehicle, let alone spent time driving either one.

I've been researching MINIs for the past month. "Real" road tests are very hard to come by, with instrumented tests. However, there are thousands of "reviews", "driving impressions", "short takes", "first glances", and finally "road tests" in name only consisting of someone went for a short drive and shared their thoughts but sans any objective data. Sad, very sad.

Try to find a "classic" road test of the 2012 Mini Cooper S hardtop, of the tried/true Car & Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend of the 70's variety: 2-3 pages of commentary and observations, then a full page data panel of specs, sizes, capacities; braking and acceleration test results; etc. Quite difficult. Didn't used to be, but you did have to have a lot of magazine subscriptions (for good coverage). Some would say...that's a lot of what's changed: $$$ for real reporting is sorta dried up.

 

Yeah, it's sad whats out there.

 

That's not a review. It is a comparison of a few specs of each car, with a bit of text wrapped around them. The same text is almost certainly repeated in every car comparison on that site, with the names of the cars switched around as appropriate.

 

Honda has ruined the civic. It is too big and ugly now. The last generation was so much better looking. It's not even 5 star anymore.