In February at the 2018 Auto Expo, Honda announced that it will launch three new products in India this fiscal. One of the three - Honda Amaze - is already on sale. The 2018 Honda CR-V and the new Honda Civic will be arriving in the second half of the current fiscal year reports ET Auto.
In October last year, it was reported that India will get the new tenth generation Honda Civic in 2019. The sedan was unveiled back in September 2015 in its current form. It is due to get a facelift by end 2018 or early 2019. India will get the facelifted model. Our guess is that Honda will introduce the model in the last quarter of the current fiscal year (January - March 2019).
With the launch of the Honda Civic scheduled for 2019, the Honda CR-V is likely to arrive first. A launch in Q3, FY2018-19 (October-December 2019) could be on the cards.
Unlike the eight generation Civic that was sold in India and the current Honda CR-V, both new models will feature a diesel engine option. It will be a 1.6 L unit produced at HCIL's facility in Tapukara, Rajasthan.
A report published earlier in March claims that the 2018 Honda CR-V will get the 120 PS/300 Nm version of this engine. The Thai-spec CR-V gets a twin-turbocharged version producing 160 PS and 350 Nm. While Honda is yet to confirm the specs, it may be wiser to launch the CR-V with the more powerful 160 PS version considering its competitors viz. Jeep Compass and Hyundai Tucson, both have similar or higher power and torque outputs. Unlike the model it will replace, the new 2018 Honda CR-V will have a three-row seating configuration.
The 1.6 L i-DTEC engine that does duty on the Euro-spec Honda Civic diesel develops 120 PS and 300 Nm. It pairs with a 6-speed manual transmission. A 9-speed automatic transmission is set to be made available at a later stage. The Civic will rival the Hyundai Elantra, Toyota Corolla Altis, and the Skoda Octavia.
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Honda will follow up the launch of the CR-V and Civic in India with three new models over the next three years. If recent reports are anything to go by, two of them will be SUVs. One will be a sub-4 m offering to rival the Maruti Vitara Brezza, Ford EcoSport, and Tata Nexon. The other will be roughly 4.3 m in length and will rival the Hyundai Creta.
[source - ET Auto]
