Toprak says the new Civic looks like an expensive luxury car, especially when compared with its predecessor.
The revamp is costing about $500 per car, Honda estimates. Toprak says the spending was necessary to attract new buyers. Many people who would have bought larger cars are now looking at compacts because they're in fashion, he says.
Compact car sales now account for 14.6 percent of the U.S. market, up 2.2 percentage points from just five years ago, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank.
Honda will get part of the revamping cost back by raising the base price of the Civic LX by $160 to $18,965 with an automatic transmission. But the company eliminated the stripped-down DX version, which started at just over $17,000 with automatic.
The quick do-over puts the Civic back among the top cars in its segment, says Lindland. But it doesn't mean that all automakers will upgrade their cars every 19 months.
"It's expensive to do these," she says. "I wouldn't say this is a trend — yet."
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