Honda has announced changes to its lineup for 2021, some of which we’ve been expecting for a while—while some that are a bit of a surprise. The big news surrounds the Honda Civic, which is at the end of its current lifecycle. There’s an all-new 2022 Civic on the way, and so Honda is rearranging its compact-car stalwart’s lineup a bit in advance of that debut.
The new model year won’t bring an 11th-generation Civic Type R. The 2021 Civic Type R is a carry-over, with a rather special limited-edition offering plenty of tweaks and enhancements. It’s more a swan song for the 10th generation than anything else.
But the Civic Si won’t hang around. It’s on pause—Honda’s very clear that it will return for the 2022 model year, but there won’t be a 2021. What’s not coming back is the Civic Coupe. The official word today is that the Civic Coupe will conclude production at the end of the 2020 model year. This shouldn’t be surprising—coupes are disappearing throughout the segment, and Civic was one of the last holdouts. Honda points out that the Civic Hatchback has also been stealing coupe sales—up to 24 percent of all Civic sales since 2016, while Coupe sales have fallen from 16 to 6 percent over the same period. The Hatchback will take up the sporty mantle in the Civic lineup for 2021 and beyond.
More bad (but unsurprising) news, if you’re a fan of the space-efficient and surprisingly fun Honda Fit: It’s dead in America. 2020 will be the final model year for the car known as the Jazz in other parts of the world, but it’ll stay in production through the fall to fulfill any remaining demand before departing our shores. Honda says the Civic Hatchback and the HR-V are already taking enough sales away from Fit that, together, the two vehicles can simply take its place. We’ve also had strong signals that this would happen, since Honda already indicated that the funky fourth-gen Honda Fit, sold elsewhere, would not come to the U.S. Consider that confirmed today. Honda will increase production of the HR-V to capitalize on growing sales (and the departure of the Fit), which were up 19 percent in 2019.
One final discontinuation is the Clarity Electric, but we knew about this back in March. Unloved, the company’s only EV in the U.S. won’t be much missed. Honda’s uncompetitive 89-mile EPA range meant the Clarity, for whatever other charms it may have had, never had the right specs to compete in the small but growing EV space.
While light has been shed on the 2021 lineup, we don’t have all the details yet on the 2022 Civic. We expect it to be sleeker than the somewhat busy 10th-gen car, with improved convenience and safety throughout and a 1.5-liter turbocharged inline-four underhood. The 2.0-liter base engine, however, may go the way of the Coupe—but no major loss there. And we also expect the Hybrid to bow out, with the Insight carrying the gas-electric flame. We’ll miss the spunky little Fit, but we should see great things from the 2022 Civic.
Updated to include confirmation from Honda about the Civic Coupe discontinuation after the 2020 model year, and incorporate information about model sales figures.
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