You may consider the ultimate practicality test for a car to be transporting suitcases, mountain bikes or camping gear. But as far as I’m concerned, the ultimate practicality test for any car is tackling a car boot sale.
Yes, the British car boot sale. Pile everything that is clogging up your house - be it clothes, furniture or musical instruments – into your car and sell them at a discount price (or full price depending on how posh your local boot sale is).
Why is this the ultimate practicality test? Well, you can never really gauge how much space you are going to need when doing a boot sale, due to the vast variety of shapes and sizes you are going to be dealing with, so it helps when you have an uber versatile car.
So how did I get on with our Honda Civic Tourer long termer at my local boot sale?
Honda Civic Tourer boot space and dimensions
Aside to the creative practicality solutions I am going to list below I just want to make a point of saying that on paper, the Civic Tourer isn’t short on storage space.
With all the seats in place, the Civic Tourer offers 624 litres of space - and 1,668 litres with the seats down. That’s big, bigger than other hatchback-derived estates like the Ford Focus Estate and Volkswagen Golf Estate.
Does the Civic Tourer pass the folding table test?
Most stalls at a car boot sale will have a foldable table to display trinkets and what not on, and fitting a foldable table in a car is harder than it sounds.
Usually, if you try and get a foldable table into a car you will either struggle to fit it through the boot and or door opening – or, once you get it in, you’ll find it scrapes the roof lining or is incapable of lying flat due to intruding wheel arches in the boot.
But the Civic Tourer laughs in the face of foldable tables. Not only will it load into the boot with ease – thanks in part to its wide opening and low loading lip - but it will also lay flat, with the rear seats up if need be.
The Honda Civic Tourer’s secret floor
If that wasn’t good enough, the table can actually stand up-right in the boot. If you don’t go for the spare wheel in the Civic Tourer you get a very useful 125 litre storage area under the boot, which is big enough for a fair few bags – or, of course, a folding table.
This can either be propped up and held open with a hook or folded inside itself so the lid doubles up as a floor.
You’ll probably end up using this under floor storage more than you think. It’s ideal for hiding valuables, storing overnight bags and – if you are away for the weekend – taking the bulk out of huge suitcases.
Honda Civic Tourer magic seats
Honda’s trademark magic seats also make an appearance in the Civic Tourer. As opposed to flopping forward like a lot of other rear car seats, exposing wires and bare metal, Honda’s magic seats imitate cinema seats and fold up.
Height wise, this frees up storage space from floor to roof, allowing for easy storage of, yes, you guessed it, a folding table. Also, as the Civic’s doors open to a wide right angle, fitting anything in the rear is made easier.
Due to the simple folding mechanism of these magic seats, when in place they allow for easy under seat storage.
And due to their bench-like construction, when you fold the rear seats down they simply occupy the space under themselves allowing for the backrests of the rear seats to lay flat and give you a smooth loading surface throughout the entire rear.
Netting, anchors and flasks
Enough with the big stuff, what about all the little fiddly bits that go along with a boot sale – plates, shoes, bags, things that can get easily misplaced.
Thanks to multiple anchors and stowage solutions in the boot, including the likes of nets, it’s easy to stop things from sliding around. There is also some side netting to the right side of the boot that allows delicate items to stop clunking into other objects – which I used to store a fragile espresso cup set.
The fact that the boot is nice and square makes storing multiple small or soft objects infinitely easier as you can shove things right into the corners and maximise space.
Other little things like cup holders in the centre console, rear door bins big enough for travel mugs and the fact that you can sit in the boot without falling into it, are things that become creature comforts when doing a car boot sale. And they help you realise that the Civic Tourer is a boot sale beast.
