I have a confession to make.
This is actually the second time I've recorded most of the footage
for this episode of "Casey on Cars".
You see, I started by judging this car the way I would typically judge a car;
the way I have for most of the cars in the past.
Is it fast? Is it luxurious?
Does it handle well? Et cetera.
And, the truth of the matter is, this car solves different problems.
This car answers the question — not unlike the Stelvio back in January —
"Hey, I've got a growing family, and I want
something to cart that family around,
and I want to do so not necessarily in a stylish way,
or in a fancy way,
I just want to do so efficiently,
and I want to do so cheaply.
So, what do I buy?"
Well, this is one of the answers to that question.
This is the 2018 Honda CR-V EX-L.
Now that's a mouthful; but what does that really mean?
It means it's this entire car — which is well loaded with
automated cruise control, lane keeping aids, CarPlay, Android Auto, et cetera.
And all of that for under $30,000.
The truth of the matter is, the CR-V may be the best 80% car I've ever driven.
It gets you 80% of the way to great...
but it never *quite* gets there.
Let me tell you why.
[vroom]
[VROOM]
So I feel like I have to make a disclaimer about the Honda CR-V.
It's a very nice car — there's no question about it.
It does everything I ask of it, at least reasonably well.
It was not a tremendous amount of money
and, it's nice!
The disclaimer, though, is that this is not the sort of car that
I, personally, would generally like.
It... doesn't really *excel* in any one particular thing.
Truly, nothing in this car is displeasing.
But, I can't say that I've found anything in the car that makes me go
OOOOH!
Maybe that's an indictment of me, and not an indictment of the car at all —
certainly the CR-V is an extraordinarily popular car.
But... I just want that...
...that little *something*...
...that makes me feel like
"Okay, I understand you, and you make sense."
I just haven't found it.
This particular car, it is a turbocharged four cylinder, but...
...it doesn't really move with any particular quickness.
Again, it's not really a bad thing; it's not a performance car.
But, even my wife's XC90, if you really ask it to move, it'll get out of its own way.
Where as this thing... not really.
So here we are in a parking garage, where it's a little easier to see the dashboard.
And let me give you an example of this CVT transmission.
I'm going to take off with no particular quickness, and
I'm going to try to keep my foot at about the same throttle input.
And you'll notice that the RPMs might move a little,
but the speed will keep climbing while the revolutions per minute stay about the same.
So let's look.
[Engine revs]
So I'm hovering at about 2000 RPM... a little less...
And now I'm doing 20.
But I was at roughly 1500 - 2000 RPM the whole time.
It's just very very peculiar.
I don't really understand why everyone seems so upset about it.
But... it's certainly not my preference of transmission.
The cockpit of the CR-V is fine.
One of the things I find interesting about it, though,
is that you can see the flared-out rear brake lights... from the rear-view mirror.
Which I thought was kind of funny; you can see it right there.
One thing I do like is how you can see the kind of aggressive haunches of the car from inside the car.
It makes it look a lot more aggressive than you'd otherwise think it is.
I do like that the center of the digital dash is... digital.
It's a display rather than just gauges.
I do think it's a bit busy.
I would prefer if... maybe it looked slightly more traditional.
It's weird to me that you have this big mile-per-hour or speed meter just... in the center
with little-to-no differentiation from any data around it.
The center display, I'm... not a big fan of.
Everything just seems so harsh, and so cluttered.
There's so much text here, with little differentiation between font size, or font face.
It's hard to tell what's important, and what isn't.
If you go through the rest of the menu system, it's... fine.
I mean, it does what you would want it to do.
This particular model does not have navigation, which is... odd... but... fine.
The CarPlay support is good; I can't demonstrate it because I'm filming using my iPhone, but it's good!
The switchgear in the car is pretty good, all told.
The temperature control is ever-so-slightly mushier than I prefer, but is mostly fine.
Similarly, the turn signal stalk is clunkier than I would prefer.
Overall, the interior of the CR-V was spacious but not cavernous, and just generally speaking, pretty nice inside.
One of the subtle touches I do like on this car is the way in which
it encourages you to drive in an eco-friendly way.
At the top of the instrument cluster — above the tachometer —
there's a green bar when you're driving efficiently, that disappears when you're driving inefficiently.
And as you lay off the gas, it gets brighter, and comes back and says
"Good job! You're green."
There's nothing in your face about it; it's just kinda there.
And, I can't think of a better implementation of a subtle way of saying "Please drive responsibly."
There's nothing about the CR-V that says "I'm cheap", but there's also nothing about the CR-V
that says "This is fancier than what you've paid for".
This is exactly what you pay for.
One of the weird things about the CR-V is how unbelievably chatty it is.
It seems to beep for any reason whatsoever.
Watch what happens when I get out of the car.
So as I get out and walk away, you'll hear a weird beep for no reason, then you'll hear it lock.
There's the no reason beep.
And as I walk away...
[beep]
then it locks.
Okay, the locking I can get behind; I actually kind of like that it locks automatically when you leave.
Then, as I walk up and grab the handle,
[beep] ..beep to unlock. That makes sense.
Then if I come around to the back,
[beep] I don't know why you need to beep
when I've hit the button that says "Open the trunk".
Which, it is a nice powered liftgate, which I do like.
Then I hit the button [beep] to close it; lots of beeps for that too.
The thing is that, all of the beeps sound exactly the same.
Some of them are a little bit longer than others, but there's never a change...
[beep] There's never a change in tone.
If you try to drive off the road, the lane keeping assist just says "beep" on the inside;
it sounds exactly the same.
It's very very weird, and very very chatty, and honestly, a little bit frustrating.
I'm sure, to some degree, you can go through the menus, and maybe fix some of this.
But, I'm judging this on its default behavior, and its default behavior is really chatty, and that's really anno...
[beep]
...really annoying.
This is going to sound utterly ridiculous, but I *love* the backup camera in the CR-V.
I'm going to back into a parking spot, and check this out.
As I go into reverse, I have a normal backup camera; this is not that particularly exciting.
And I can back up into my spot; maybe I just want to tuck in really really tight
against that piece of wood there.
Well, I can adjust the camera a little bit, and get a little bit better view,
but check this out.
This is like a top-down view to ensure.. that I get it...
just right.
How awesome is that?!
As always, I brought the car to a lift, to see what was going on underneath of it.
In this particular case, this CR-V was *not* all-wheel-drive, but instead was front-wheel-drive only.
That was a little bit surprising to me, as I didn't even realize you *could* get a CR-V
that was front-wheel-drive only.
Otherwise, though, it was mostly unremarkable underneath.
If I were to summarize the CR-V, it's an 80% car.
It's 80% of the way to quick.
It's 80% of the way to having really nice switchgear.
It's 80% of the way to a nice digital dash.
It's 80% of the way... eh... maybe 50% of the way... to a nice infotainment system.
Just, something about it, it just never quite gets there.
Maybe it's because it's not a luxury car; I'm not doing it justice, and I'm comparing it unfairly.
But nevertheless, I just, I keep coming back to,
this isn't far away from the same feeling I have
in the XC90, like the one that happens to be in front of me right now.
It's so frustrating! Because it never quite gets there.
It's just... all of it... is just so close, and just never quite sticks the landing.
And that's what's so frustrating about it.
But, to be fair, for under $30,000 MSRP, it is hard to argue with it.
It's got all the advanced features that you would want of a car that's maybe $5- to $10,000 more money.
And yet, it's not that terribly expensive, and it does everything reasonably well.
It's hard not to like the car, even the weird continuously variable transmission,
Which never quite felt *normal* to me, but never really *bothered* me either.
Aside from the fact that I think it's the chattiest car I've ever driven,
it's a really nice ride.
And if you're in the market for a small SUV, to cart around a family of 3 or 4,
it's hard to go wrong.
You should at least check out the 2018 Honda CR-V.
As always, thanks for watching.
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