Thailand Makes The Honda Civic Hatchback, Plans for Export To Other Markets

Honda Thailand have officially launched the Honda Civic Hatchback for the Thai market. The Thai-assembled Civic hatchback is priced at THB 1,169 million (RM148k), and as our sister site Auto Spinn confirms, will be exported to other markets in later stages.

The first appearance in the ASEAN region came at GIIAS 2016, garnering much fanfare from the start, last month, Honda Thailand confirmed the model launch. Thailand is the second country in the world to produce the Civic Hatchback, after the U.K. 

Spec wise, the hatchback is similar to the sedan. The hatch is powered by Honda’s 1.5-litre VTEC Turbo four-cylinder that outputs 173 PS at 5500rpm and 220Nm of torque between 1700rpm and 5500rpm. Power is sent to a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT).

Besides the suite of safety features, the Civic hatch also receives convenience features such as the Auto Brake Hold, Emergency Stop Signal (ESS) and Walk-Away auto lock, first featured on the sedan model.

Visually, the Civic hatch gets a sportier front bumper with bigger foglamp enclosures, and more aggressive skirt design, while the grille is finished in high-gloss black, versus the chrome units on the sedan. The hatch is also offered with a Black Midnight Burgundy Pearl highlight colour exclusive for the hatch.

On the inside, the hatchback offers a 60:40 split folding rear seats to aid practicality. Elsewhere, the 7-inch touch screen ‘Advance Touch Control’ infotainment system is present, the system is compatible with Apple CarPlay.

Honda is quiet at this juncture about the eventual markets it plans to export the Civic hatchback. However, it would probably not make it here.

Honda Malaysia’s CEO Katsuto Hayashi previously suggested that the Civic Hatchback is unlikely to come to Malaysia, as there is little demand for hatchbacks. Additionally, since we know of four big reveals Honda Malaysia plans to make this year, the Civic hatchback is unlikely to be one of them.