Comments: 1-15, 16-21
Cruise control Cancel button does not work.
Sunroof leaks water, but only in car wash or super heavy rain. Dealer wants $2000 to fix, body shops want $1000 to fix. The car has never been wrecked. It was my first car and we got it new.
The timing belt broke at only 62,000 miles. It was cheaper to replace the entire engine because some other stuff broke as well when the belt broke. The dealer paid half of the labor, but we had to buy a used engine. The used engine had only 99 miles on it.
I was getting 33 mpg on average, but now with the same exact driving, except now I have my daughter in her car seat, in the car, I am only getting about 26 mpg. I didn’t realize that adding a 30-pound baby, 40-pound diaper bag in the trunk, and a 20 pound car seat would kill the mpg like this. It would be fair to say that I have gained over 50 lbs myself. The car had a major tune up at 109,000-miles.
Water leaks on the passenger side floor board with the A/C on. 3 of the 4 power windows have been rebuilt at a cost of over $250 each. The only one that has not broke is the driver’s and I use it 90% of the time.
The transmission has always been jerky and shifts very harsh sometimes. Now it seems to take a few more seconds to go into D.
A big black air bubble, or something, has formed right on the 120 mph on the dash and some of the dash lights have burned out.
The headlights are really dim now and the paint is flaking all over the sides of the roof of the car and on the edges of the hood.
The driver’s arm rest is broken and will not stay up and the driver’s door will not latch properly, even thought the car has never been wrecked or even jacked up from a flat tire. I can say that the car has never had a flat, but even the most expensive tires seem to only last 30,000 miles on this car.
CD player has had a CD stuck in it for years and it will not come out.
The car is loosing antifreeze, but it only leaks like a quart a month. The repair shop says that they can’t find the leak. The leak on the passenger side floor board is for sure from the a/c they say.
A few fuses and other dinky things that don’t amount to much.
The car drives good in the city, but not too well on high speed windy roads. The car is obviously too light in weight.
For the size of the car, it has great room. Almost as much room as my husband’s Chevy S-10 Blazer SUV thing.
The a/c seems to take forever to cool the car down, but has been checked and it hasn’t used up enough gas to recharge it yet.
The car is basically worn out at only 135,000 miles. I was hoping for over 200,000 miles, but my confidence has been crushed since the new engine at a young 62,000 miles and I will have this thing paid off in a few months along with the credit card for all the repairs.
I know a few other people with civics that have had some of the same problems. I will not buy another civic again, I don’t even feel confident in buying any Honda now. I am trying to be as fair as possible on this car, but dag gumet, I have had the oil changed on time, never let anyone barrow the car and I have always driven the car easy and never floor the accelerator. I won’t even drive on dirt roads.
I have friends with over 200,000 miles on their cars and they don’t even take care of them.
I can say that the car is very cute and it looks friendly. My mom’s 2001 Buick Le Saber looks like a fat cat fish, especially from the grille. Her car has over 160,000 miles with no problems and drives much better than my civic, but it is just too big and only gets 22mpg.
I will not miss this car at all and I will probably trade it in on a new Corolla, or Focus, because I see that both of these cars get great gas mileage and most of my friends have over 100,000 miles on theirs and have had no problems. I am really looking for a small wagon, but the Corolla doesn’t come in a wagon. I know the Focus does, but I think that Ford will stop making it.
Your experience pretty much mirrors mine. My experience with a Honda Civic was NOT good either. CV joints failed at 40,000 miles, brakes had to be replaced at 45,000 miles, it was using a quart of oil every 3 weeks at 50,000 miles and the engine blew up at 90,000 miles. No domestic I've ever driven has EVER had HALF the problems the Civic did, including one that made it to 240,000 miles (a Dodge) and one that made it to 325,000 miles (a Ford). Neither of them EVER had an engine or transmission replaced, or hardly any problems at all.
Hey, if you really want to get rid of it, I'll give you $3,000 for it.
The first commenter is on here all day long. He is always talking about how he was curb checking and his cv joints went bad. How he is burning all of his oil every 50,000 miles a on good engine... he goes on and on on every post that ever makes it on here about his Civic with 50,000 miles and so on. Well I have never had any problems with my Hondas and they have lasted me long. 255,000 miles and no oil burning because I change my oil. No problems with the sunroof in any of my Hondas equipt with them. I am sure there are some bad ones out there, but the guy with the CIvic with 40,000 miles that needed new cv joints pushed me over this time... Why buy a Chrysler when they are almost bankrupt?
20:08 I don't believe one word of that story.
Honda engines simply do not do that, and certainly not at 50,000 miles.
I think the reviewer should go for the Focus. Our 2001 ZX-3 was awesome and never had a second's trouble. The one Civic my family had was absolute garbage also, and never even made it to 100,000 miles before it totally fell apart and was sold for junk.
<<I think the reviewer should go for the Focus. Our 2001 ZX-3 was awesome and never had a second's trouble. The one Civic my family had was absolute garbage also, and never even made it to 100,000 miles before it totally fell apart and was sold for junk>>
Oh, you mean the Focus that has had over 20+ recalls to date? Real winner there.
Have a 2001 Focus with 178,000 trouble free miles. The first and only two issues have came up in the last 6-months. I got the car used with only 800-miles on it. 1. the passenger power door lock will not unlock with the button remote, but you can unlock it by opening up the door from the inside, and 2- the overdrive solenoid inside the automatic transmission has stopped working.
I have never taken my focus in for any of the recalls and it still drives fine other than these two problems.
Just to be fair I must say that the transmission has never been serviced, because I was told by the selling dealer that the only two things that will ever need done to the car is a new timing belt every 150,000 miles and regular engine oil changes along with air filter and fuel filters and a serpentine belt every 60,000-miles. I have done exactly this.
I took the car to a transmission shop. They tested the transmission on a computer and it said a bad #6 or something, which was the solenoid. They dropped the pan and said that the fluid and filter was good. I had them put new fluid and a new filter in the transmission and paid them $100 and have been driving it since. They said that the car would go on forever if nothing else in the transmission went out.
They said that by not servicing the transmission had no affect of the solenoid going out.
I am not going to pay $200 to have the door lock fixed and I am not paying the $600 to have the overdrive solenoid fixed. I will just drive with the o/d off. I do all city driving anyway.
The way that you tell that the solenoid is bad is that when the car tries to go into overdrive, the engine will rev up and the car will not gain speed and the trans will slip real bad. Just push the o/d off button and the transmission catches and you can drive forever in 3d gear. The car gets up to 65mph in 3d gear and isn’t wound up in RPM’s and the MPG has not suffered, but like I said, I do 99% in city driving at speeds under 20mph.
People can’t really judge a car brand. We need to look at how the car was taken car of and realize that cars are physical pieces of equipment that do and will break, wear out, and fail for no reason.
I’d say if you have a problem out of any car with under 60,000 miles that it was a factory defect or quality issue. Any thing after that is typically owner abuse, or neglect, and or just normal wear, or normal premature failure. Just like some people. Some of us live to be 94 years old and others die of health issues at the age of 42. My grandmother lived to a healthy 98, her identical twin died of cancer at the age of 47. All of her 4 brothers died in their late 50’s of brain tumors. They all came from the same blood. You can have 5-honda civics and 4 will go to 300,000 miles and 1- can die at 100,000 miles. This does not mean that all Hondas are junk.
I have had a car go up to 250,000 miles with no problem and I have had the same year, model, of the same car drop a valve and blow a 5-inch hole in the side of the block at only 118,000 miles. That was my old 1992 Honda Accords, but I got both used with 100,000 miles on them, So I’d suspect owner abuse in the engine that blew up at only 118,000 miles and good owner care in the one that went to 250,000 miles with virtually no real costly repairs, just to see its demise in a house fire. All the heat did was melt the front bumper and scorch the paint on the hood and top of the fender and make the windshield turn milky, but the insurance company took possession of the car and totaled it. It would have cost me way too much to keep it. The car still ran fine, but I was afraid to drive it because the front tires might of got weakened form the extreme heat.
I don’t think that we can judge cars that over 7 years of age or over 60,000 miles. Start getting suspicious of how the car was treated and focus on abuse and realize that all pieces of equipment have a useful life and a certain percent will fail early and some will make it 3 standard deviations out in the long lasting direction.
I feel confident buying a Honda or a Ford. After all virtually all the parts that go into a manufacturing plant to assemble cars come from the same 7 major suppliers who supply parts to Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Ford, GM, etc. You have just 2 companies that makes about 80% of all the water pumps in all the new cars sold in the US.
I work for Johnson Controls and we make virtually all the seats for every type of car that you can buy in the US. Everything from Chevy to Nissan. We make about 80% of all the HVAC modules and controls for all cars sold in the US. I can tell you the quality is the same across the board. We ship out truck loads of controls to go to Japan to build the Lexus branded cars. The quality is excellent for all of our customers including Toyota, GM, Ford, Nissan, etc, and I am not just saying this to be a company man, it is true.
The bottom line is just take care of your car and it will take care of you, usually.
16:15 could not be more wrong. My family had a Focus that had all its maintenance done by the book, even including detailing, and yet it continually let us down on numerous occasions. Ford vehicles are built to the lowest legal standards, which once again proves why they lost a Mustang a minute in dollars last year.
Although Civics are good cars, they are overrated. I owned 3 civics, the last one a 99 ex. At 90 k tranny went out. It was apparently a problem for these cars, since Honda started outsourcing assembly of some of their auto trannies for cost savings. (And yes...I used Honda factory tranny fluids, and tranny flushed it when it was time). The tranny design wasn't the problem, but the quality of assembly was. Some Acura models were also affected. To tell you the truth, I think most cars (especially Japanese and Korean cars) built over the last 10 years are on even keel with Hondas. I find civic engines exceptionally smooth, but woefully underpowered. Honda built up a well deserved reputation of reliability in the 80's and 90's, but nowadays, they are no longer as superior as they used to be.
"18th Apr 2007, 08:02.
16:15 could not be more wrong. My family had a Focus that had all its maintenance done by the book, even including detailing, and yet it continually let us down on numerous occasions. Ford vehicles are built to the lowest legal standards, which once again proves why they lost a Mustang a minute in dollars last year."
No, you just proved his point exactly. You had trouble with a single vehicle, and based on that you make sweeping generalizations about an entire company. My dad just bought a Toyota 1/2 ton pickup with 57,000 miles, and it quits within 2 miles of the driveway and has to be towed home every time. By your logic, therefore, all Toyotas are junk and Toyota should go out of business. Sorry, but it can happen to any vehicle of any brand.
16:15 is absolutely correct -- there is some small percentage of units that just don't go together correctly, maybe all the parts happen to be at the outer ranges of their tolerances, and they just won't make it for the long run.
Most vehicles will last a long time with minimal care, and another small percentage will run to extreme miles, all influenced (but not dictated) by owner maintenance and driving habits.
Some people can't accept that a Honda engine could blow up, and some can't accept that an old Dodge Slant-6 engine could blow up, or that a Chevy 350 engine could blow up, but all instances are true regardless of what the fanatical brand supporters think.
Ford has fields full of diseased vehicles that are lemons and they don't know what to do with them. My Brothers Ford Ranger was just bought back by Ford last month because of unresolved transmission problems. You might say only one vehicle, but I have heard many stories from family, etc of broken engines, defective parts, continuious transmissions which go out more than an Acura's transmission. The only Ford I have seen that can take the heat is their 30 year old panther platform and the F-150. All the other vehicles are built to the lowest legal standards. that is why the Fusion is built in Mexico and it doesn't do as good as a Honda Civic in crash tests either.
Yes, Honda outsources transmissions to the USA and now they have problems. Hmmm I think we need to stop this outsourcing to America and build them in a safe place like China. What the heck are you talking about!?! I also own a 2000 Civic and there are no problems. People drive like they stole their cars and wonder why they break.
I wish I had bought a new Ford as Honda/Acura would not buy my lemon back. Long standard factory warranties are the only way to instill a return of faith in vehicles.
Hi Guys.
I bought my Honda Civic EX brand new in 2002 and have driven it to 112,000 miles in the last five years. I have not faced any of the problems that some of you state. The front shocks began leaking at 50,000 miles and by 80,000 the struts in them were dead. I continued driving in this condition and have not had any problem except for the added bumpiness. Other than that I have not had a single problem with it. I regularly change oil b/n 3k-4k miles and had the required maintenance done at 90k miles. This car has seen rain, snow, sun, never garaged and still runs great. The paint has maintained it's quality over the last five years. I have also redlined the engine many many times and it still functions allright. It still has the original clutch and brake pads. Never wrecked and never been in any accident. It typically gives b/n 28-31 mpg with the 87 rating gas. I don't know if those problems are with the automatic transmission since I drive a stick.
Cheers.
Keep writing...
To the person that comments about the Ford Fusion made in Mexico on June 14th, lets just put something clear: manufacturing in Mexico is of very high quality, in fact it is one of the countries with highest quality of assembly, no wonder why Mercedes-Benz manufactured E-420s, C-220s and C-280s in the 90's in Mexico, the same reason why Honda manufactures thousands of Accords in Mexico, the same for Mercedes truck engines and the VW Beetle and Jetta, the Nissan Sentra, etc, etc...
So, the problem with Fords is that maybe thy are badly designed, they make them with low quality materials or whatever, but that is a problem of Ford, the American company, it is not a problem of Mexico.
One of the best Fords made lately is the Escort-Tracer (Made in Mexico). The other way around, yes, I think that American cars are way below in quality, dependability and reliability in comparison with European or Japanese cars.