Is the 2011 Hyundai Elantra or 2012 Honda Civic the Best New Compact Car?

If you follow mainstream auto news and reviews, you no doubt realize that 2011 has been very good to the Hyundai Elantra. Not only are sales up, but the car has also been fawned over by auto journalists with a fervor that has led to misinformation and irresponsible reporting on the part of many media outlets. I road-test new cars for a living and have a new one each week. Recently, I had a unique opportunity to test firsthand if all the hype was legitimate or not.

I had the privilege of road-testing the 2012 Honda Civic EX-L and the 2011 Hyundai Elantra Limited, and it was clear to me that I had to do very in-depth road tests under near exact conditions to answer the very important question of whether the Civic or Elantra is the better car.

What Is Good About the 2011 Hyundai Elantra?

Although I did discover one very shocking and disappointing truth about the 2011 Elantra during my test, overall I found it to be truly fun to drive, refined, and powerful, thanks to its new 1.8-liter, 148-horsepower/131 lb. feet of torque, 4-cylinder engine that is Hyundai's best in-house design yet. I have to admit that the Elantra has a more daring exterior design than the Civic, but try to understand that no compact four-door family sedan on the market today will ever make you look sexier. You won't get more dates because you drive a 2011 Elantra, but it is an affordable car whose virtues are easy to see.

Why Has There Been So Much Criticism of the 2012 Honda Civic?

The 2012 Honda Civic is conservatively styled in a very inoffensive way, but from the way some journalists talk, you would think that Honda had given this sedan a hunchback and a tail. The Civic also caught heat for sticking with its proven five-speed automatic and the same 1.8-liter, 140 horsepower, 4-cylinder introduced with the last generation model.

Hyundai now gives buyers a six-speed automatic, but despite the advantage of an extra forward gear, I routinely got confused about what gear to be in and shifted harshly whenever I needed full-throttle acceleration. Also, when was the last time you heard of a car being raked over the coals for using a carryover engine that is only five years old? Perhaps the appeal of penning a review that depicts the 2011 Elantra as the biblical David taking down the Goliath-like Civic was too appealing to resist.

The 2011 Hyundai Elantra Limited I drove came in fully loaded at $22,110, whereas the Civic EX-L I tested was $23,455 and came with pretty much every feature as the Elantra, barring a back-up camera and heated rear seats. But seriously, if you need a back-up camera in a car this small so you won't run someone over, please do everyone a favor and stick to riding the bus. So, much of the criticism of the Civic is misguided.

How Do the 2011 Hyundai Elantra and 2012 Honda Civic Compare as Ownership Propositions?

The Elantra's interior design is appealing to look at, but the Limited model's price advantage is less impressive when you compare its leather seats, which feel like they are covered in scratchy vinyl when compared to the soft and supple leather seats in the Civic EX-L. My Elantra tester also had some bubbling around the leather-wrapped steering wheel, and some of the stitching on the leather seats was already fraying despite having very few miles on the odometer. The 2012 Honda Civic interior was flawlessly assembled, and the eye-level mounted new i-MiD screen, which shows audio, Bluetooth, and navigation functions, cuts down on driver distraction as you are driving and is highly intuitive to use.

Even considering all of this, I was still impressed by the Hyundai's capabilities, but then I got the surprise of my auto review career when I calculated my fuel economy averages for each car. The Civic returned 30.4 miles per gallon to the Elantra's disgraceful 20.7 miles per gallon. That's nearly a 10-mile-per-gallon difference in the real world and proves that you only learn the truth about a car through one-week tests like these.

If you just went by the EPA estimates that many journalists report as Gospel truth, then you might actually believe that the Elantra could ever get close to its 29 city/40 mpg highway estimate. The Civic is rated at 28 city/39 highway, and, while I admit to being a bit of a lead foot, I drove both cars nearly identical distances with lots of city driving and both took me on the same road trip on the highway to San Diego.

Is There One Reason Why Buyers Should Avoid One of These Vehicles?

Those fuel economy numbers should be a lot closer than they turned out to be, and someone at Hyundai or the EPA needs to either investigate or start learning the meaning of honesty. For this reason and this reason alone, I simply can't recommend the 2011 Hyundai Elantra over the 2012 Honda Civic. And that price difference between the Elantra and Civic would vanish pretty fast if you averaged 10 miles per gallon less for each gallon of gas you bought for your allegedly efficient 2011 Hyundai Elantra.