New Civic's front fascia received cosmetic treatment to the grille, lower bumper-air dam sections, new fog lamp designs.
Current Civic.
Front headlamps are now smoked. The effect cannot be seen clearly in the photos it will be more obvious on an actual car. HIDs for the topline 2.0-litre models, as per current specs.
Current Civic.
Tail lamps now have octogonal lenses. Note the 4 ultra-sonic transceiver cells for the reverse sensors. Current Civic uses only 2.
Current Civic.
New 17" wheel designs (2.0-litre models only).Some might question if the changes are so minimal, why bother doing it at all? Well car companies don't throw money around to develop new parts for no particular reason. And obviously the everyday Joe on the street who asks such question are not running a car company in the cut throat motor trade business. The Civic is close to entering its third year in its model life, depending on which market are you refering to. Car companies have a difficult task of maintaining interest of consumers towards their products. A typical consumer's purchase process can be generally simplified to 4 key stages - Awareness of the product, final consideration, actual purchase and finally loyalty to the brand. Many consumers are aware of Alfa Romeo, but those AR cars have one of the lowest converstion rates in the industry from awareness stage into consideration stage. Advertisements are good at promoting awareness, but it is not really useful in keeping the product fresh in the minds of would be buyers across longer period of time. This is where a design update comes in, to provide a stronger reason for an ad campaign which will hopefully translate into increased showroom traffic. Once potential buyers get into the showroom, the sales team will take over from there. Showroom traffic is particularly important in the car industry as this is not some insurance plan that sales team can easily carry around for their pitching. A design is supposed to provide a reason for potential buyers in the market for a new car to drop by the showroom. And the more these "updated / revised" design cars get out on the streets, the more would be buyers take note, which reinforces the products transfer from the awareness stage to consideration. Following introduction of almost every updated model, sales will almost surely increase. If it doesn't, well the company is pretty screwed.Even though the changes are small, it is sufficient to draw potential buyers' curiosity to see the car actual in sheet metal at the nearest showroom / road show. Plus, there is really nothing wrong with the design of the previous Civic. So why change a formula that is clearly working well? The downside to these design updates is that owners of existing models will see the car's residual value drop whenever a newer model is launched. Brand loyalty as well as the ability of existing owners to trade in their current model at a fairly good value is critical. German car makers follow this philosophy closer as German models usually keep their designs fairly constant throughout the model life, only tweaking the internal mechanical bits and improving the specs level.