Mechanically, the most notable upgrade is the Civic's reinforced front-chassis section, designed to cope with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's new 40-miles-per-hour narrow-offset frontcrashtest (which is quite a wallop, by the way).
Crash-test footage shows the front of the car folding up like an accordion, giving it a 2.0 point rating, the second lowest of the 28 cars NCAP has examined.