AT $47,200 drive-away, the Honda Civic is the catalyst for this comparo. It’s the sole Civic on offer in Australia now that Honda’s local office has (vastly) simplified the line-up by reducing it to a single spec, and the first all-new model to transition to the company’s non-negotiable national drive-away pricing scheme. Think you’ll be able to haggle the dealer down? Forget about it.
That’s a lot of dosh for a small hatchback, even factoring in the inclusion of all on-road costs, so it begs the question: why buy a Civic when there are so many other options at the circa-$50K mark from brands that aren’t averse to a bit of negotiation?
Shopping at this price point opens the door to things like powerful midsize sedans and brands with proper premium cachet, not to mention a bevy of hot hatches and ultrapragmatic mid-size and large SUVs. You can get a base Mazda CX-9 Sport for $46K before on-roads, for crying out loud, so where’s the value in a $47K small hatchback? That’s what today we’re gonna find out.
We’ve got a small mainstream hatch, an entry-level premium sedan, and a feature-packed mid-size four-door. Only the presence of a turbo four-cylinder mounted east-westwards under their bonnets unifies this bunch, because in most other respects they are very disparate cars pitched at rather different demographics.
Factor in price, however, and they’re surprisingly close bedfellows. Like the Civic, which launched here at the end of last year, the Audi A3 is fresh metal. We’ve pinched the range-opening A3 35 TFSI sedan which, with a $49,400 retail sticker, is within cooee of the Honda. Opting for the five-door A3 Sportback bodystyle
