Radical car, radical power train - so what's wrong with this picture? Honda's new Civic is a revolutionary-looking hatchback but it's designed for and will be built in Europe.
There's also the much less radical Civic sedan you see here, for sale first in Japan and the US. Japan is where Honda builds its hybrid drive systems so this is the one that gets petrol-electric power.
The new Civic Hybrid saloon is a lot smarter than the previous Civic IMA. It has a short nose and MPV-like quarter windows ahead of the front doors, and the cabin has a double-layer fascia similar to the one in the hatchback.
Honda SA says it has no plans at present to bring the Civic Hybrid to South Africa.
It's significant that the name is now Hybrid rather than IMA, which stood for "integrated motor assist".
These days people know what a hybrid is and the new car can run on the electric motor alone like a Toyota Prius, which wasn't possible before.
But how the Civic does this is very different from the Toyota's although the Honda also uses continuously variable transmission (CVT).
In the Honda the 1.3-litre, 71kW engine and the 15kW (and 103Nm of torque) electric motor are always connected because the electric motor is part of the flywheel. That means the engine's crankshaft is always turning, even when the Hybrid is moving on electricity alone, which it can do up to 48km/h.
There's no mechanical resistance, however, because all the valves are shut; the air in two of the cylinders is compressed while the air in the other two expands, so it all evens out.
It also has Prius-like regenerative braking that uses the electric motor as a generator when you touch the brake pedal, which helps the hybrid to an average fuel consumption of about 5litres/100km.
There's a stop-start system as before, but previously it didn't work when the air-con was on because the air-con pump was driven by the engine. Now, the pump has its own electric motor to use when the Civic is stationary so the engine can switch off.
It restarts as soon as the brake pedal is released, to minimise delay in moving off.
Driving the Hybrid, which I did at Honda's Takasu test track in Hokkaido just before the Tokyo motor show, is a curious experience at first. There's always the sound of an engine running because the crankshaft is turning, so the only way you can tell if it's actually producing power, other than by leaning out of the boot and feeling for warm exhaust gases, is to watch the instant fuel-consumption read-out.
If there's no reading, the engine is using no fuel. If you accelerate away gently, you can feel and hear a subtle change in activity somewhere between 1100rpm and 1400rpm; the electric motor doesn't operate alone above these speeds.
So that's the hybrid part, its only other visible sign a small hump in the rear bulkhead where the slender battery pack lives (it means you can't fold the rear seats).
Driving this Civic is just as you might imagine a Civic CVT to feel, except that it has a brisk, keen step-off from rest (the 0-100km/h time is about 10 seconds), and the engine gets quite vocal when you accelerate hard, because it whips up to high revs.
It's quiet in gentler driving, though, when the electric motor's low-speed torque proves its worth.
It all works very convincingly and the Hybrid's tidy handling and smooth ride bode well for Europe's Civic hatchback. It looks like Toyota's Prius has a viable rival at last. - The Independent, London