Honda CR-V review

When we say that the CR-V is reasonably fun to drive, we don’t in any way mean that it’s a precision instrument or will beat a 911 along a country lane. Rather it’ll tip enthusiastically into a corner with a touch of body roll and lumber through with a good turn of speed.

It’s alarmingly easy to wash through a corner with understeer (the safety systems won’t quite catch you from drifting to the other side of the road), though we did test the car in quite wet conditions. Likewise it was very easy to spin up wheels with a mash of the throttle, usually the inside front. Rather more lively than you’d expect from a car that gets to 62mph in a sedate 9.0 seconds.

Still, keep it all in Eco mode and it’ll behave benignly enough. If you do have an accident there are 11 airbags inside the cabin, including a clever one between the front two passengers.

Is it comfortable? 

We’ve only driven the PHEV version of the car so far, which carries all the toys that Honda could squeeze into one SUV, including adaptive dampers. That car rode impressively smoothly, though, smothering out the worst of the UK’s roads quite well. Might be a different story with five people onboard, of course. 

What’s the PHEV like?

Glad you asked. This is Honda’s first plug-in hybrid powertrain for the European market, and it works quite well. The firm’s experience building the e electric city car (with its tiny range) have ensured lessons are learned for this: the plug-in CR-V manages a respectable 51 miles of official range out of its 17.7kWh battery. We would’ve thought that’s almost big enough to consider a CCS rapid charging option, but that can come at the expense of battery health. So no dice.

As it is, the car will charge up in brisk 2.5 hours using its 6.8kW onboard charger. A nifty feature with the Honda app is that you can turn the heated seats, steering wheel and windows on remotely on a cold day so the car is nice and toasty when you get in. Set the timer while the car’s plugged in and it’ll even warm the battery up for you so you get the most out of it on the move.