5 reasons why Honda Civic is my dream ride

 

Last weekend I have the opportunity to go for test drive in this newly launched 10th generation of Honda Civic together with other bloggers. This All-New Honda Civic will be the game-changer in the C-segment cars in Malaysia by offering stylish design, new powertrain and class leading features. And here are the 5 reasons why Honda Civic is my dream ride! #RidetheDreamCivic

1. Design

I'm always a bigger fan for Honda Civic compared to other Honda's car because I think they are more stylish and sporty.in appearance.

With the sleek headlamps and the grille connected by the chrome lip gives this new Honda Civic a more sporty appearance.

In total there are five colours for this new Honda Civic i.e Dark Ruby Red Pearl ( in picture), Modern Steel Metallic, Crystal Black Pearl and two brand new colours Lunar Silver Metallic and White Orchid Pearl.

Out of so many colours, I like this 3 Honda Civic in these colours ; Dark Ruby Red Pearl,  White Orchid Pearl and Lunar Silver Metallic. 

Night view of Honda Civic (front)

Night view of Honda Civic (rear view) . So sexy I like it!

2. Safety

Very often we hear about the term Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA). But do you actually know what it means and how it works? To be honest I don't really know and in the past I guess it's the function to make sure the ride is stable.

What this Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA) really means is it's a Traction Control to help to sense and correct over steering and under steering to improve cornering capabilities. So basically it helps to stabilize the cars when you do cornering and do emergency stops. I felt cornering is smooth and stable even at 100km/h during our test drive.

I don't really know the importance of this Vehicle Stability Assist until...I had this Reverse Flick terror ride. I thought I'm going to die but I survived thanks to Honda Civic's VSA! 

Airbags! Well we never had enough of that right? The more the merrier right? Well the All-New Civic offers 6 Airbags (Dual Front Airbags, Side Curtain Airbags and Side Airbags). Oh well, nice to have a lot of Airbags but I never want to activate this feature ...

On top of that this All-New Civic have additional safety features such as Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS), Brake Assist (BA) with Emergency Stop Signal (ESS). It basically helps the driver apply full braking pressure in an accident avoidance situation and automatically activates the brake and hazard warning lights when it detects an emergency stop situation.

3. Advance Features

You know how your car is warm after you park outdoor even just few hours in Malaysia. So my practice is I usually run to my car and start the engine and let the air condition run a bit to cool down the temperature inside before driving. First of all it's really troublesome and second this is dangerous because I have to basically unlock the car and step out again.

This All-New Civic offers a very useful feature specially for Malaysian! Honda Remote Engine Start feature where you can start your car engine 10 meter away to let the air con run to cool down the temperature. Worry not the car is still in lock mode until you enter the car. Love this feature very much, my makeup will never melt again!

On top of that I also like this Walk Away Auto Lock automatically locks the car when the driver leaves the vehicle 2 meter away and no key is detected in the car. This hands-free locking capability is really useful especially we have our hands full or even forgotten to lock the door :P 

What if I tell you .... you do not need to press on the brake when you stop your car. Possible ? Well it's possible with Honda Civic Auto Brake Hold feature. 

Just simply activate this function by pressing on the Brake Hold button and whenever you need to stop the car in traffic or at the red light, you do no need to keep your foot on the brake. All-New Civic does it automatically for you. And when you ready to go, just accelerate.

I felt this is simplest yet smartest feature ever because this just make our driving with Honda Civic simply more enjoyable. 

The All-New Civic offers "Advance Interface" via its 7" Advance Display Audio

You can connect to your Apple CarPlay app. Soon it would be available for Android user.

Speaking of handsfree, All-New Honda Civic allow seamless synchronization between your CarPlay and the Car interface program by connecting your iPhone to a dedicated USB port. Once it's connected the display now shows an IOS interface built specifically for a car.

4. Performance

I have tried driving both 1.5L VTEC Turbocharged and 1.8L. Personally I preferred the 1.5 VTEC Turbocharged one after having a test drive uphill to Bentong via Genting Sempah because the pick up power and acceleration is much more better and  powerful. Both engines are mated with Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) for a smooth driving experience and fuel efficiency. Both car variant of the All-New Civic are "Energy Efficient Vehicle" certified.

Moreover the 1.5L VTEC Turbocharged variant is equipped with smart monitoring which give a peace of mind to driver in maintaining the efficiency of the engine performance. It will indicate the timing of oil change and notify customers with an indication lap on speedometer on their service status.  

5. Service

We visited Kah Motor Selayang Service Center as they are the largest Honda 3S Center in Malaysia. 3S means they offer Sales, Services and Spare Parts for all your Honda needs. 

Every time you send your car to Honda Service centre, their technician will need to follow their check list upon registration. 

To ensure consumer's car is well protected while going through servicing, Honda technician will cover the driver seat and steering wheel to prevent it from becoming dirty.

All the 3S Centres are equipped with the DST-i diagnostic tools which lets them detect problems which may not be apparent at first. 

Professional tools to check tyres and I'm seeing this for the first time. Usually third party tyres shop check tires condition manually i.e use eyesight and the foreman might miss it. However for more accurate reading, would advice to check it at Honda Service Centre. 

From what I observed indeed the Honda Authorised Service Centres technicians are highly skilled and professional. I felt reassured as well that only genuine parts are being used here as well. 

Honda is a really familiar brand close to my heart because my mum is driving her trusted Honda City for years. Henry & Duncan my our team in this test driver were saying WOW every time we discovered the features of this car. All of us came to agreement that Auto Brake Hold feature is the best feature to have for city driver like us! 

And I can never overlook the importance of Vehicle Stability Assist feature the same way again now that we know the importance... that it might just save our life or the kitten on the road with Honda Civic's Brake Assist!

Speaking on stability, Honda Malaysia sent us to experience one of the lifetime experience, Flyboarding in Marina Putrajaya which requires balancing & stability skills to be able to fly up in the air like Iron man with water jet boots! 

  Looks easy and I can tell you NO..... cos they are experts!

This extreme sports need a lot of perseverance because it's really hard to flip your body and stand straight under the water with the high water pressure from your boots. You have to be extremely calm and steady for pressure to push up in the air.

After drinking gallons of water from the Lake ( cos I was thirsty lol)  finally I emerged from the water and have a few seconds of glamour moment before I felt into the water again. 

Flat Water Paddling. This is easier than Flyboarding but then again balancing is the key. Just keep calm and paddle on! Love this amazing view of Putrajaya! Thanks to Honda Malaysia I got another bucket list checked!

Before I forgot, the prices for All-New Civic 3 variants are:

RM 113,800 for 1.8L (on-the-road with insurance) 

RM 127,800 for 1.5 Turbocharged (on-the-road with insurance) 

RM 135,800 for 1.5 Turbocharged Premium (on-the-road with insurance)

Note : For  white Orchid Pearl colour, you need to top up additional RM 300. And there is a rebate of RM 3000 for Honda Civic for this year end promotion, please visit the website or walk in into any Honda showroom to find out more.

In case you are wondering how much is the service maintenance fee for this new Honda Civic. It's pretty affordable as it's price between RM 63.60 to RM238/every 10k service for the first 70k mileage service 

For more information, visit

www.honda.com.my 

www.ridethedream.my

Thanks Honda Malaysia for arranging this test drive trip, I have such a great time hanging out with these awesome people while riding my dream ride :) #RideTheDreamCivic

Well here are the top 5 reasons why Honda Civic is my dream ride. What is yours? 

Honda Hybrid Family Road Trip 2013 : My Jouney to Ipoh Perak with Honda Civic Hybrid

I been to many road trip to north of Peninsular Malaysia (including Southern Thailand) and I must say usually the fuel cost is one of the highest cost for travelling. Just last week where I had the privilege to drive the brand new Honda Civic Hybrid 1.5L.to Ipoh, Perak courtesy of Honda Malaysia. I was really really excited as this is my first time driving a hybrid car however this is not my first time driving Honda cars as we have Honda City as our family car, so I'm pretty familiar with it :)

Oh do you know you too can enjoy the same privilege too because Honda Malaysia is currently running a campaign for Malaysians to test drive Honda Hybrid for 3days 2nights! How cool is that? Before I tell you how, why not I share with about this Honda Civic Hybrid works and a little bit more about my Ipoh trip :)

Before I talk about my Ipoh trip, let's talk about the car first.

What is hybrid car ?

A hybrid vehicle is a vehicle that uses two or more distinct power sources to move the vehicle. For Honda Hybrid car, it is powered by an engine and assisted by an electric motor. It actually means the car is not 100% fully operated by fuel.

 In simpler word - hybrid car saves petrol consumption and you can actually saves a lot of hard-earned money! 

And combining fuel efficiency, and driving performance with environmental performance through reduced fuel consumption and reduced CO2 emissions, Honda hybrid cars are much more eco friendly compared to other cars. Yes now as a car driver, we also can play a part to protect our environment by driving a hybrid car.

  

 With a click of button, we can activate the Econ function of the hybrid car. Looks really cool right

In case you are wondering how the battery of the electrical motor recharged by itself, well every time you step on the brake the electric motor would be recharge by itself. Therefore there is no way Honda Hybrid car can never run out of battery!

I discovered that when the car on Eco mode and as I completely stop at a traffic jam, the car will jerk a little which I later found out that because Honda Civic Hybrid is using electric brake and as compared to other models. Also one of the hybrid car benefit is that it does not burn any fuel when the car stop (perfect for Malaysian traffic jam). Hence this is one of the things that makes driving a hybrid so eco-friendly. 

Oh one more thing do you know Honda Civic Hybrid is a keyless car, as it works on Smart Entry which means we do not need to take our the key to unlock the car. With the key in our pocket or handbag (don't even need to take out), it would actually automatically unlock the car as we walked next to the car. Well I love this feature because I always can't seems to find my keys and now I more cautious with the surrounding before getting running into the car.

Oh one more thing do you know Honda Civic Hybrid is a keyless car, as it works on Smart Entry and Push Start Button which means we just press the push start button to start the engine of the car after pressing the brake.

Honda Civic Hybrid colours comes in Frosty White Metallic, Crystal Black Pearl, Polished Metal Metallic and Taffeta White. Which is your favourite colour ?

Check out a short video of the car I took here

The Honda's i-VTEC engine is assisted by an Intelligent Motor Assist (IMA) to produce impressive power to the Civic Hybrid and help with its fuel efficiency.

 Love the LED tail lights, very stylish

Spacious boot space is perfect for family road trip

 Spare parts under the boots

Spacious leg room & <3 the leather seats 

 Very spacious back seats too!

It has air conditioning for the back seat passenger :)

 Spot that green leaf on the right- it means we have switch on Eco Mode

I really like Honda Civic Hybrid Intelligent Multi Information Display (i-MID because it shows all the information like the eco guide, average speed, energy flow, fuel consumption and range capability all at a touch of our fingertip at the steering wheel switch control. 

By pushing ON the Econ button in Honda Hybrid car, we SAVE FUEL, REDUCE emissions and INCREASE the IMA battery recharging rate. The Eco-sharing function at the below picture provides feedback about our current and long term practices by showing the leaves as our ECO scores. And by drive economically (without keep speeding) and we will receive ‘leaves’ as our ‘eco score’. As our driving improves, the ‘leaves’ will grow into trophy.

Trip to Ipoh, Perak with Honda City Hybrid

That's me & Juli my teammates, she looked so serious driving! We left KL around 8am and took us around 2 hours to reach....Safety first, no speeding okay.... ahem!

 Our journey to Ipoh is pretty smooth with Honda Civic Hybrid. Ride was stable, comfortable & engine is quiet. There is one thing I realised that when we are on Eco mode, the car picked up, is a little bit slower than their normal driving mode because it is fuel saving mode, hence the pick up speed is compromised which is acceptable. 

Our journey from KL to Ipoh only used less than half a tank, super fuel efficient!

A picture with the bunch of bloggers who also joined the Ipoh road trip with Honda Malaysia . Check out what car the rest are driving here

 First stop we visitied the Honda Hybrid Family Road Trip in Tesco Ipoh. There are a lot of acitivites on-going. There are car exhibition, test drive session, games, eco green bazaar and performances from local artists at night time.

                                                                     The showroom                                                                                                                     

 There are some activities going on the booth,to show how a hybrid car work. 

Honda Hybrid is a power of two (electric motor and engine)..just like a bicycle you need to paddle to generate power and speed

 I won some Honda merchandiser from those mini games they have in the booth!

Yes don't worry,  all Honda Hybrid cars come with 8-year warranty on the battery! So at least you will be worry free for the next 8 years! I checked that even a battery replacement is only about RM2-5k depends on models

We managed to rush back after our heritage visit (which I will tell a bit more) to watch The Honda Hybrid Family Road Trip 2013 concert which is in collaboration with One FM.

A lot of people came to see Danny One performing and he is quite cute in entertaining the guests.

 Another Chinese local artists Gina 

During the concert, there are lucky draw session and this lucky boy won a brand new Nikon camera!

And this girl can't contained her happiness when she got her Crabtree & Evelyn prize.. (maybe I will laugh like that too if I were to win those lah)

After the roadshow, we need to fill our tummy... because we are so hungry!

Some of the famous Ipoh food we tried in 2 days time..thanks to some of our friends, they are food hunter.... so they know where is the best food around Ipoh! Ah....I still miss the custard egg and Ipoh chicken hor fun! And these are heritage food because usually they are pass down from generation to generation!

After tummy is happy, it's time to visit some of the heritage sites in Ipoh!

I am ashamed to tell you that I have not actually visited a lot of places in Ipoh...and I think I only been to Sam Poh Tong Cave Temple...and seriously I didn't know got so many heritage sites to go until I google it here

This is Nam Thean Tong at Gunung Rapat ( just realized that this is very near Sam Poh Tong too).  

This Kuan Yin statue is looking majestic surrounded by the green . Actually great to see that Ipoh is still preserving its greenery, thumbs up to Ipoh local council in proper preserving our beautiful heritage. .just like how Honda Hybrid technology will help to preserve our environment!

 Nam Thean Cave is located next to Lin Sen Tong was built on water (if I'm not mistaken). There is a koi fish pond nearby too. Watch my instavideo of the beautiful surrounding here  

Next is the haunted Kellie's Castle where Anna & The King movie was filmed here!

Well been hearing about this so much , finally finally get to visit this famous haunted Kellie's castle! In fact I was quite chicken to visit.... but when I saw a big crowds visiting there.... okay I think not so scary anymore! 

Took this panaroma view of Kellie's castle with my Samsung Galaxy S3 , very nice right!

This beautiful yet deserted mansion is located in Batu Gajah, half an hour's drive from Ipoh city center. Kellie's Castle was built by William Kellie Smith, a Scotish planter in the 19th century for his wife Agnes Smith and kudos to the Ipoh local council restoration works, this place is still looking good. 

The entrance fee for this Kellie's castle is RM5/person and it's opened from 9am to 6pm

The first place you have to visit in Kellie's Castle is of course the Ghostly Cloister Balcony! 

This is it..... do you see any shadow.... okay lah too bright can't see anything (THANK GOD!)

This the living room which visitors cannot enter because it is locked out

I pass by the wine cellar and seriously feeling spooky, got the cool breeze like that ... blew on me....I decided not to go down to see as the staircase is very narrow and dark. Anyone been down there to see the secret tunnel ? 

So I went up to see, a lot of empty rooms and I went further up to the rooftop. These stairs are very narrow and small. The stair hand rail is shaky and don't seems reliable to me, so got to be careful to go up & down.

Another pic with my Samsung Galaxy S3

This place actually reminds me of Agra Fort in India because the bricks that used to built here are all imported from India..and. I actually found out Kellie's Castle architecture is  a mix of Greco-Roman, Moorish, and Indian architecture where 70 craftsmen from Madras India to build this place. 

However a Spanish flu epidemic killed most of the 70 Indian construction workers. So Kellie Smith built a Hindu temple near the castle to please the Indians and to restart construction. Kellie Smith left to England to to fetch a lift for the castle tower, but he died shortly thereafter from pneumonia. So the construction on the castle built for love was left uncompleted. The castle ruins are rumored to be haunted until today ( I think got 70 Indian ghosts ?) 

I was really happy to see the surrounding of Kellie's Castle is still properly preserved although it has been built since 1909 ( OMG it's now is 104 years old!). Heritage sites like this must be preserved so that our next next next generations can see.

I'm sure you know global warming is getting worst from day to day... and the fuel is not a natural resources which is not a renewable energy and would come into exhaustion one day. Why not consider getting a hybrid car, although it might be a little more pricey but in long run it is more cost efficient because it has lesser fuel consumption up to 54% annually. Not only that it emits lesser c02 too which would help preserve our environment :) 

So why not give a chance to yourself and test drive any Honda Hybrid car today? Sign up now today at http://bit.ly/IQcsrI so that you can stands a chance to drive around with Honda Hybrid car for 3D 2N for FREE as long as you have a MyKad & valid driving license! 

Honda Power of Dream - let's aim to turn our dreams into reality for our coming generations!

Honda Civic Hybrid 1.5L  is currently selling at RM 119,980 (On-The-Road with Insurance ). 

For more information about Honda Hybrid cars visit http://honda.com.my

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