Forget the Corvette. Ignore the F-150. The Honda Civic Hybrid may be the most quintessentially American car on the road.

I say this after a weekend spent in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Like Cambridge, San Francisco or Seattle, the city may have a latté dispensary on every corner and no fewer than five restaurants serving farm-to-table organic charcuterie. But unlike similar cities stateside, there’s nary a hybrid to be found amidst the miniature Mazdas, Pontiac hatchbacks and diesel Vee-Dubs crowding the Queensway at rush hour. As a Bostonian, it was utterly disconcerting for me to hear cars idling at stoplights.

I’m no sociologist, but it’s easy to understand one reason why hybrids haven’t caught on in the Great White North. The average Canadian drives 8.8 miles to get to and from work, usually commuting from dense suburbs close to city centers — er, centres. The average American travels almost three times that distance. Even with the Dominion’s higher gas taxes, Canadians could all drive ‘59 Fleetwoods to work and still come out ahead.

In the U.S., we don’t like densely populated towns. In the postwar housing boom, we clamored for land, lots of land, only to get fenced in by rings of densely populated highways. We also dislike taking public transportation, funding public transportation, paying for gas, driving small cars, looking like we’re wasting gas when we’re wasting gas, finding a place that sells diesel or making any sort of compromise whatsoever.

Enter the 2012 Honda Civic Hybrid. Redesigned for 2012 with a new lithium-ion battery pack, it’s a uniquely American car, created for those who want to have their half-baked cake and eat it, too. It’s a pleasure to drive among hybrids, but anodyne compared to a TDI. It’s not expensive, but it’s not as cheap as a car without batteries. It’s a fuel-sipper, but a Prius uses less gas. By default, it’s the least-worst choice.

The 2012 Civic’s exterior update has had a lukewarm reception at best. The prior generation was as stylish as it was ubiquitous, but the new car only excels at communicating just how much money Honda saved through the redesign.

Inside, multiple LCD screens are canted towards the driver, like some sort of automotive Bloomberg terminal. On the tester I drove with leather and navigation ($26,750), those displays worked together about as closely as the 2011 Red Sox. For instance, the same glowing rectangle was responsible for displaying the radio tuner and navigation, but song titles were buried in a menu on another screen entirely. Replacing a tuning knob with a mini joystick makes scrolling through satellite radio channels a laborious task. And I’ll never understand why Honda wastes prime dashboard real estate by putting a tachometer right behind the steering wheel on a hybrid with a CVT.

Honda’s already got so much flak over the Civic’s interior that they’re in the process of drawing up a redesign. If their engineers want an example of how to better display relevant information, check out Lexus’ CT 200h, which offers such gems as an unobtrusive gauge that combines a tachometer and a fuel economy display.

Aside from all the screens, the car has a surprisingly low-tech vibe. The nav system’s display has a font cribbed from a serial killer’s ransom note, the seat heater switches are pure Heathkit and the shifter is straight out of a mid-’90s Accord. Prius aficionados will immediately note the absence of keyless ignition.

On the road, the car shines. The car relies on Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist, which adds electric power on acceleration and recaptures energy through regenerative braking. Since it augments a smaller, lighter engine, the Civic Hybrid gets the same mileage on the highway as around the city.

Despite my averaging 41.4 mpg, there was little feedback to indicate the Civic Hybrid’s duality of propulsion. Acceleration felt more brisk than a Prius, braking felt less grabby than most hybrids, and the car handled as competently as a regular Civic. My only complaint is how digital and detached the electric steering felt, as if the wheels must only turn at even-numbered angles.

It’s a good car overall, but the balance of battery-electric power has changed. Where the old Civic Hybrid just had to be better than the Toyota Prius, the new car is competing against offerings from Ford, Hyundai and Kia, plus a spate of VW diesels and low-emissions compacts. Price and performance-wise, the new Honda straddles an awkward middle-ground between Priuses that lease for $200 a month and loaded Ford Fusion Hybrids that sell for remarkably close to the upper limit of the Civic’s asking price. By comparison, the Civic Hybrid is a compromise, a kludge, a slice of Americana.

The Civic Hybrid’s toughest competition, however, is in the same showroom.

First, a little lesson in marketing: Toyota’s Prius became the hybrid poster child because the automaker added utility to the Prius that none of their other vehicles have. If they’d just stuck batteries in a Corolla, the customer could immediately see how little value a hybrid would add. But the Prius has a funky dashboard, a huge hatch and a lot of personality for an A-to-B appliance. You might love it, you might hate it — but you probably won’t find yourself sweating bullets in a Toyota dealership, dithering over its financial merits versus a Matrix. Similarly, Ford started the Lincoln MKZ and MKZ Hybrid at the same base price to avoid that conversation.

Aside from a hybrid drivetrain and standard Bluetooth, the base Civic HF is almost identical to the base Civic Hybrid. Sure it has an EPA rating of 29 city/41 highway, but it also sells for almost $4,600 less. I’ll do the well-worn hybrid premium math: Assuming that gas is $3.50 a gallon and that you’re driving 12,000 miles a year with a lead foot in city traffic, it’ll take nearly nine years to make up the difference between a Civic Hybrid and Civic HF in fuel costs alone. About the only rational rationale for buying the Hybrid over the HF is the two fewer tons of carbon dioxide the battery-boosted car emits over its ICE-only stablemate. Coincidentally, that’s the same amount of carbon dioxide a human emits each year just from digesting food. Go on a juice diet, and there’s no reason to get the Hybrid.

Or, you could just move closer to work and potentially halve your carbon footprint, but that would be downright un-American.

WIRED 44 mpg highway, 44 mpg city. Improved lithium-ion battery pack. Nimble on the open road. So! Many! Screens!

TIRED Interior could use an update. Less value than other hybrids. Steering is too robotic.

Photos courtesy of American Honda Motor Co., Inc.

Chevrolet has positioned the Cruze as a small car you’ll want to drive because it’s a good car, not because it’s the only one you can afford. That same philosophy is true for the Eco, the Cruze’s more fuel-efficient sibling, and it makes for a stylish, engaging car that just happens to be quite good on gas.

For the Cruze Eco, Chevy cooked up a batch of aerodynamic trickery and weight reduction from recipes based on the Volt. If designing the Volt was putting a man on the moon, the Cruze Eco is Tang and a pen that writes upside-down.

For example, GM engineers designed a shutter that reduces drag by closing off the lower grille at high speeds. Together with panels on the underbody, some closed-off vents at the top of the grille, a spoiler and a ride-lowering sport suspension, the changes reduce drag ten percent and improve looks immeasurably over the base Cruze.

With a stick shift, it weighs in at 3,009 pounds, a savings of 214 pounds over a standard Cruze without the Eco package. Sheet metal was reduced 1 mm in thickness in parts, while weld flanges were reduced between 1 and 2 mm in length. The wheel and tire choices saved an additional 21.2 pounds. Sure, we’ll take lightweight 17-inch alloys — for the environment, of course.

Having suffered through every Chevy compact from the miserable Monza to the comatose Cobalt, I was less than optimistic while picking up the keys, especially since “weight savings” sounded suspiciously like “cost cutting.” However, after a very pleasant week in a 2011 Chevy Cruze Eco, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The automatic Cruze Eco arrived for testing just as gas inched above $3.50 a gallon. Even with a heavier foot than most, I managed 32.6 mpg over 500 miles in a mix of stop-and-go, suburban and highway traffic — close to the EPA estimate of 26 city and 37 highway. You can expect even better mileage from the manual, which is rated at 28 city and 42 highway.

It wasn’t just the fuel economy that impressed me, however.

On the road, despite the weight savings, the Cruze feels like it’s held together by electromagnetic force. Handling is firm and steering is precise, if a bit numb for spirited driving. On paper, 138 horses might sound tame, but the Cruze doles them out with gusto in a way that no hybrid I’ve driven can match.

In curves, there’s little lean or body roll, and the Cruze makes quick and entertaining work of onramps and highway sweepers alike. On straightaways, the Cruze effortlessly motors along at 80, even in strong crosswinds. Everything about this car inspires confidence, and nothing about it feels like a soulless appliance.

The interior surfaces are pleasant to the eyes and fingertips. A padded, two-tone dash ensconces rows of well-placed controls and a leather-wrapped steering wheel with buttons for cruise control, stereo and phone. All buttons and switches move with a satisfying amount of feedback that belie the car’s cost, and even the cloth seats were comfortable after hours of driving. Trunk space is class-leading and the rear seats fold down.

Most of the cutting-edge technology is on the exterior of the car, though our tester featured OnStar, Bluetooth and XM, plus USB and aux-in jacks. It was also equipped with Audio Facebook, which uses OnStar to read and post status updates with a minimum of distraction. I’d see a little more utility in a service that lets you access Twitter, e-mail or texts — or one that converts speech-to-text for status updates — but it’s a good start.

What’s not to like? Well, the test car took a while to shift out of first gear, and the 1.4-liter turbo displayed a tiny bit of lag when hard-pressed during highway passing maneuvers.

It would be nice to have a cover for the center console cup holders, which accumulated loose change instead of lattes. The storage area on top of the dash can’t hold anything that could be damaged by heat from the sun, and the rear seats would be tight for anyone taller than 5′11″.

The Volt can be forgiven for hogging the spotlight in the Chevrolet lineup. After all, it’s a technological tour de force that redefined the automobile in less than five years of development. However, it’s not going to be a volume seller.

That mantle, hopefully, will belong to the Cruze — a spirited, solid car that’s as fun to drive as it is painless to fill up.

WIRED Lessons learned on the Volt trickled down to the Cruze. Chevy proves that high-tech and high-mileage don’t mean hybrid. You can get a manual with a turbo.

TIRED Other cars in the same class sell for a slightly lower MSRP. Turbo lag. “Eco” trim level sounds cheap, but it’s both better-looking and better-equipped than the base model.

Photos courtesy of Chevrolet