Best Tires for Honda Civic
The latest Honda Civic model offers sharp handling to please keen drivers while providing plenty of space and comfort to be a practical family car. There is a wide range of model and engine choices to suit almost everyone but all models offer an unusual combination of athletic handling and a comfortable ride. Available in Sedan and Hatchback guise, this is a compact vehicle that is cheap to run with excellent gas mileage and low insurance costs. It’s reliable too and ranks highly for for customer satisfaction. However, to get the best from a sharp handling vehicle like the Civic, the correct tire choice is crucial!
You could of course just replace your tires with the same type it came with from the factory. But there are often good reasons to consider purchasing something different. Remember when a huge auto manufacturer like Honda buys tires it does so by the thousand!
So the decision to choose a tire type and brand can often just come down to the price. But as a consumer, when the tires need replacing you can choose the type of tire you want to suit your own requirements. For example, depending on the type of driving you do and the local weather, you may choose a brand based on their stopping distance, road noise, tread life, wet weather performance or handling characteristics.
All-season tires are the most popular type of aftermarket tire on the market as most vehicle owners prefer a single tire that is suitable for different conditions throughout the year rather than having to swap them out for the winter. As the name suggests, all-season tires can be used in almost all weather conditions as they use a rubber compound that is soft enough to handle well in the summer but not get too hard in freezing temperatures during the winter months.
Best All-Season Tires for the Honda Civic
Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 3+
Ride Quality: 9 Noise Comfort: 8 Handling: 10 Traction: 9
The Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 3+ all-season is a high performance tire that is fitted as standard to some exclusive brands including Porsche. In addition to good handling in the summer months, the Sport All Season also performs well when the weather gets colder.
Friction, traction, cornering grip and high speed braking are outstanding. This tire is designed to cope with all sorts of weather conditions to deliver good performance throughout the year using natural rubber content to stop the tyre hardening in freezing temperatures thereby enhancing winter grip.
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Hankook Optimo H727
Ride Quality: 9 Noise Comfort: 9 Handling: 8 Traction: 8
An all-season tire that is quiet and comfortable yet offers great traction in wet weather and a long life. Specifically designed for luxury models, the Hankook Optimo is a great choice for standard Honda Civic cars where smoothness and reduced noise is more important than outright performance.
The Hankook Optimo uses circumferential grooves to remove water and a high sipe density featuring hundreds of biting edges for grip in the snow. Yet the solid centreline provides outstanding dry weather performance offering the best of both worlds for a true all-season option!
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Best Touring All-Season Tires for the Honda Civic
Firestone FT140
Ride Quality: 10 Noise Comfort: 9 Handling: 8 Traction: 9
The Firestone FT140 is a perfect all-season touring tire as it offers a near silent driving experience and comfortable ride with excellent bad weather handling. The Firestone ribbed tread tire design helps to minimize the road vibrations so that you can drive long distances in comfort.
This tire is also highly durable and has the M + S symbols for safe driving in all conditions. The complex circumferential grooves in the tread pattern help to evacuate rain water away from the tire to reduce hydroplaning and enhance directional stability. These tires are actually a factory fit item on some Civic models so come with the Honda seal of approval!
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Goodyear Assurance ComforTred Touring
Ride Quality: 10 Noise Comfort: 8 Handling: 8 Traction: 9
The tire offers all season grip and a smooth driving experience in poor conditions. This tire features asymmetric tread patterns and shoulder blocks with sipes for winter traction. This tire does a great job of combining excellent handling in good conditions and good traction in the winter.
The circumferential grooves remove water from the surface of the tire to prevent hydroplaning and offer peace of mind when driving in heavy rain. Driving in light snow is also well within this tires capabilities too.
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Michelin Defender T+H
If you don’t need a high performance tire, then the Michelin Defender T+H is a great choice as a Civic touring tire. This tire uses an effective all-season tread compound that equals or beats competitors in almost every performance category. This top range Michelin tire uses a propriety tread compound with what Michelin calls "IntelliSipe Technology", effectively interlocking zigzag sipes to offer the best grip, traction and braking power in all conditions.
The Defender T+H also provides a class leading ride quality in the Civic with almost no noise at speed on the highway. The new generation tire compound features a high silica content to aid wet traction, and lateral sipes with circumferential grooves that effectively clear water away from the tread to reduce the risk of hydroplaning.
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Best Winter Tires for the Honda Civic
Blizzak WS90
Ride Quality: 8 Noise Comfort: 8 Handling: 9 Traction: 10
The Blizzak WS90 is one of the best winter tires available for almost any vehicle and works well with the Civic too. This tire is the new kid on the block and uses advanced technologies including a Hydrophilic Coating with bite particles in the revolutionary tire compound which explains the outstanding roadholding results for winter driving.
Braking distances are exceptionally short, better than almost all competitors in dry or wet, snow or ice. Traction in very cold conditions is excellent. The Blizzak WS90 is the tire all competitors seek to emulate right now when it comes to winter driving capability.
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Michelin X-Ice Xi3
Ride Quality: 8 Noise Comfort: 9 Handling: 9 Traction: 9
The Michelin X-Ice Xi3 is an awesome winter tire which will keep your Civic on the road during all but the very worst winter storms. Perhaps only second the Blizzak WS90 in terms of winter traction and grip, this is still a great choice for a winter tire offering good performance in all conditions. Though it trails the Blizzak WS90 slightly in terms of winter performance, unlike the Blizzak it does offer a class leading treadwear warranty of 40,000 miles!
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Best High-Performance Tires for the Honda Civic
Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric
Ride Quality: 9 Noise Comfort: 8 Handling: 9 Traction: 9
The Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric tires are hugely popular with petrol heads for offering great handling in all conditions. The unique tire design offers best performance even in less than ideal conditions.
The tread is comprised of a dry handling zone which puts maximum rubber on the road for the best dry traction, plus an asymmetric tread pattern with microgrooves which is designed to remove water to improve grip on wet roads. This combination tread pattern produces a tire that offers drivers reliable and safe handling on wet and dry roads with a tread life of up to 70,000 miles.
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ichelin Pilot Sport 4S
Ride Quality: 8 Noise Comfort: 9 Handling: 10 Traction: 10
The Michelin Pilot Sport 4S is the high performance summer tire that is designed for maximum summer performance and is perfect for sporting cars such as the amazing Honda Civic Type R. This tire is offered as a factory fit option on many high performance and luxury marques such as Porsche, BMW and Audi - and was in fact designed with feedback from number of such manufacturers to produce the ultimate summer tire which on a Type R offers tremendous grip and performance and suits the vehicle perfectly.
The soft and grippy tread won't last as long as other brands but most drivers will run out of nerve before they manage to exceed the grip on these tires! The ride comfort is really good despite the performance and the tire is available in wheel sizes up to 20 inches which is maximum wheel size fitted by Honda on their Type R.
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Pilot Sport Cup 2
Ride Quality: 8 Noise Comfort: 9 Handling: 10 Traction: 10
The Pilot Sport Cup 2 is Michelin's street legal track & competition tire designed for high performance vehicles to allow faster lap circuit times and to let sports car owners achieve their vehicles full potential in dry conditions.
These tires use a Bi-Compound tread in an asymmetric design with different rubber compounds on the outboard and inboard sections to deliver maximum dry grip on tight corners with precision high speed steering.
Note that although these tires are legal for street usage, they should really only be used for track days or on dry summer days. In the wet there is a serious risk of hydroplaning so if you have these tires on and it starts raining, you should drive home very slowly especially if the tires are worn! Do not use these tires at or below freezing temperatures, in rain, snow or on ice!
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Buying Guide - Best Tires for the Honda Civic
The popular Honda Civic LX and EX models came from the factory with 215/50R17 tires whereas the Sport models used a wider and lower profile 235/40R18 size and the Type R flagship sports model came with 19 or even 20 inch wheels as standard. The OE (original Equipment) tire from the factory would have likely been either a Hankook, Goodyear or Continental, depending on the size and specification.
So depending on the year and model of your Honda Civic, you may need tires to fit anything between 15-inch wheels for older models, up to 19-inch or 20 inch wheels for later sports models with a number of various widths and sidewall (aspect ratio) sizes. You can often change the wheel and tire sizes without any adaptation, but generally it’s a good idea to keep the total diameter of the wheels and tires the same. So, if fitting smaller wheels you would need a proportionate increase in size of the tire sidewall and if fitting larger wheels you will need a proportionate decrease in size of the tire sidewall with a lower profile tire.
Smaller wheels often provide better ride quality whereas larger wheels can sometimes give an uncompromising hard ride. Though on the civic even the Type R ride is not overly firm considering the performance so bigger wheels can be fitted a long as you don't expect a luxury feel. Note that tires are more expensive for bigger wheel sizes, so if low running costs and comfort are high on your priority list smaller wheel sizes would suit you best. On the other hand if you are looking for the best handling and performance along with head-turning looks, fit the biggest wheels you can afford with the lowest profile tires!
Though the all season tires reviewed on this page do a good job in all weathers including snow and ice, if you live in a region with heavy winters and deep snow for months of the year, a dedicated winter snow rated tire would be more practical and much safer.
