1992 Honda Civic DX review from North America

Engine seals leaked oil when purchased.

Starter broke around 170,000 miles.

She had a non-OEM alternator with a lifetime warranty when we bought her and that alternator went out at around 205,000 miles.

CV boots are cracked and have been that way for 1-1/2 years now. And most of the suspension bushings are old, dried, and cracked, especially the main one in her rear trailing arm which we might end up replacing soon. (But we almost expect this to happen to rubber that has sat outside for 15 years.)

The dimmer switch is suspected to cause the dashboard light to go out on very rare occasions. If the lights don't come right back on after playing with the dimmer a little, they are always are back on before the next trip.

We drive about 20,000 miles/yr over short and long distances and she runs so wonderfully that we forget she is over 15 years old. We expect her to get us where we are going like she is a new car and she fulfills our expectations!

Her engine is rather noisy, even when freshly tuned-up. But after 60,000mi of reliable performance we have taken this to be normal for her.

We keep her extremely well maintained doing oil changes religiously between 3-5k miles depending on type of driving, and doing pressing maintenance such as timing belts and valve adjustment on schedule with Honda's recommendations. EVERYTHING including brakes, tires, broken parts, and tune-ups has cost us about 2,000$ so far. But it has paid off by her giving us nearly flawless reliability since we bought her.

Performance wise, she gets up and goes when you need her too, even on steep hills with a little bit of down shifting. She can stop extremely fast even though her brakes are non-ABS. She has a good amount of body roll when cornering at high speeds, and her handling at high speeds (90+mph) is rather loose. But for legal, everyday driving, she does exactly as we need her to. Oh, did I mention the 40+ mpg fuel efficiency?

Our biggest grievances have to do with comfort. There is lots of road noise, her seats aren't very comfortable and she is too small for our growing family and newly acquired paper route.

So, including a 2,000$ purchase price, this is the best 4,000$ we have spent on a car yet!