Nobody chooses to be a person who makes up slogans for cars: you have to try not to get too hung up on them. But Honda’s “the power of dreams” infuriated me as I drove the CR-V. It swam around my head. “Nobody would ever dream this!” I shouted as the stertorous automatic gear change dragged me clumsily along. “Not unless they’d eaten blue cheese and gone to sleep thinking about Talgarth Road.” The new nine-speed automatic transmission has made it smoother than the five-speed, but I still found it lurchy and lumbering.
These cars are incredibly popular, dominating the compact SUV market, the bestselling in the world last year. Since the appeal of the SUV is largely to show off how much space you can take up using only your wallet and your bullheadedness, I don’t really understand the market for the compact version: people are weird, was my take-home. The City-Brake Active System is the big safety feature: a windscreen-mounted laser radar that detects a likely collision at speeds of less than 18mph and brakes if you don’t. So, if you’re in traffic of more than one lane, which you often are in town, it emits a constant high-pitched noise. It’s needlessly stressful. From what I know of driving, you always would brake, unless you were asleep: they might as well have designed a seat-mounted sleeping-driver detector with a sprinkler system.
It has a panoramic glass roof, so perhaps they designed it for a driver who was looking up instead of forwards. I didn’t have a lot of use for the see-through roof, but the kids liked it because the raindrops snaked across like tadpoles. The 1.6L engine is more efficient – the best power-to-consumption ratio going, apparently, and does 55.4mpg with diesel. But you’re spending a lot of fuel for what is just a very large boot. If you had a single mattress to take to the dump, you’d be made up, which is not something you can say about many cars. But then, how often do you trash a single mattress?
I began to see the point a bit more on the motorway: the driving position is natural and cosseting, the controls all very intuitive, the grip sure; it has plenty of poke, and is really quiet. It’s not a very fun drive, though. It doesn’t beg you to accelerate, although 0 to 60 in 10 seconds is, I grant, rather impressive from such a beast. The steering is steady, but you wouldn’t call it agile. In every regard, I can think of a similar car that does it better: the Skoda Yeti does “a bit boring but safe as houses”, the Ford Kuga does “fun for sensible people”, the BMW X3 does “I’ve spent over 30k, but it was worth it.”
Honda CR-V: in numbers
Price £34,670
Top speed 122mph
Acceleration 0 to 60 in 10.6 seconds
Combined fuel consumption 55.4mpg
CO2 emissions 139g/km
Cool rating 5/10
Eco rating 7/10
