Have you ever stood around, nervously checking your wristwatch as a friend or significant other cycled through their entire wardrobe trying to find the perfect outfit? If your experience were anything like ours, they probably started with a perfectly acceptable look and finished with an ensemble almost exactly the same as the first one, albeit painstakingly composed of entirely different pieces of clothing. Most people would never notice the difference without the subtle changes being pointed out to them. The 2012 Honda Civic sedan's new duds are kind of like that.

Honda stylists have taken great pains to tug and pull at virtually every bit of clothing their new Civic is wearing. In spite of this, the car looks largely the same as its eighth-generation predecessor, a model that first bowed in 2005. This, despite the fact that the wheelbase has been cropped from 106.3 inches to 105.1 (you'd be hard-pressed to notice unless you had a tape measure handy), a change that helps make it the shortest car in its class.