1987 Honda Civic Shutle review from Portugal

Nothing really went wrong with this car; we had the car as a second car for 16 years and it always work. In 16 years some things do go wrong like the following: The battery was replace twice, tyres replaced twice, front window replaced once, exhaust, clutch, radiator, brakes, light bulbs, oil and water. The car also had a small accident on the front whereby, this was partly replaced. For the rest the car did not have regular maintenance, only when something was broken it was taken to the garage. In 16 years it was probably in the garage 10 times.

It was a great car, we had taken the car to Portugal when we moved to this country in 1991, we had just owned it for 1 year and were planning to stay in Portugal for two. Plans changed and we stayed in Portugal until 2006. All this time the Honda Civic Shuttle was with us, and always worked.

I must say the car was neglected as it was always parked outside and only used to drive short distances within the city. After some years the roof started rusting and with heavy rain it got wet inside the car, but this was not a reason to stop driving it.

As the car was never imported into Portugal we drove around on foreign registration plates for 15 years and luckily were never caught as this is not allowed. The added advantage was that we stopped paying road-tax back home as this was not needed and did not have to pay in Portugal, also the yearly MOT was skipped. The annual fixed cost of this car was extremely low, only paying insurance and NEVER having mechanical problems.

When we moved back home we drove to the airport with the Honda, stopped at a car junkyard to drop of the car and catch a flight. The last week we had the car it drove 900 km and was in good working order, a strange thing to do drive to a car junkyard with a good 19 year old working car.