1989 Honda Civic Hatchback review from North America

The distributor on these cars don't last very long. The last owner that had this car since brand new, said they go around the 70k mile range and it's very expensive to replace. However he had a total of 3 Civic's and rarely had any problems with all 3 of them.

I have a notice a weird noise from the back wheels after the purchase, but this guy had all the paperwork on all the repairs done on the car, and he said it was normal, and I guess he was right because 3 years later I still hear it and never had any problems.

Had the upper right ball joint and both left ball joints replaced with a brand new Honda alternator, which is also very expensive, but they will last a very long time according to mechanics.

Parts of the steering wheel rubber would come off on my hand while driving, so I just put a wheel cover on it to save me the time and money to fix it.

Since last year, and it only happened to me 3 times, I would start the car and for some reason it was dead as a door nail. Of course I jump start it and then it fires right up. I did have it looked at and nobody could find the problem. Then it did it again 2 more times within the year.

In a bad winter storm last year, both the battery and brake light came on but disappeared the next day. However I did not lose power or anything like that during the drive through the snow storm, and the brakes worked great. Even though the lights went off the next day, I still took it to the mechanic and not the expensive dealer, and I had them check out the whole car and never found the problem, but this mechanic worked on this car since new (when the last guy had it).

Over a week ago I drove out of state to see a friend. I'm at a stop light and out of nowhere the car dies and would not start for like 10 minutes, and after that it started again. When I got back home I actually took it to a different mechanic and he also told me he could not find any problems.

That's it.

I bought this car 3 years ago for $1,500 in mint condition from a guy who is a friend of my parents and had taken wonderful care of this car since he bought it brand new.

I live in West Virginia and I knew this car since it was bought brand new and in 20 years it has never been out of this state until last week.

I love this car. It's got everything working, it rides smoothly on the turnpike at 75mph and hardly struggles on hills, or when it's overloaded.

It's quiet with only a soft rattle from under the car and a very light noise from the back wheels, but it's soft so I can easily ignore it.

I get over 30mpg in this car, and it's fun to drive and easy to park. I live on top of a hill that is really steep, and it does not have much of a struggle going up it, except when the roads are bad, and going down the hill fast is fun.

For a 20 year old car with 40,000 shy of 300,000, I still feel very safe driving it.

I want to try to hold on to this car for another 20 years, so does anybody have any clues why I had those issues I talked about in the what has gone wrong with the car section?