1995 Honda Civic VX review from North America

Replaced O2 sensor at 130,000 miles.

I bought my '95 Civic VX new in the fall of 1995 and have 206,000 miles on it now. I give it the obvious praise for its Honda reliability. It has never stranded me except a couple of times when I was trying to squeeze too many miles from a tank of gas, and almost ran out of gas. And I have never done anything to the car outside of normal routine maintenance and replacing the usual wearable items. (including an O2 sensor, which I consider a maintenance item, albeit a longer duration maintenance item).

But I'm most impressed with its fuel economy. For the first 45,000 miles on the original set of tires (which were lousy handing, but very low rolling resistant Dunlops), I regularly averaged 55 - 57 mpg (and this is a CA emissions car). In the winter, the mileage dropped about 10 - 15%. When I replaced the original tires at 45k miles, the same tires weren't available. The originals were lousy (handling-wise) Dunlop SP4N* or something like that. I bought a set of different Dunlops to replace them and found the mileage dropped to 45 mpg under the identical driving conditions. Luckily, I bought the tires at a place that had a "1000 mile or 30 day satisfaction" guarantee so I was able to return the first set and try another set of tires without paying for the original set. I am a conservation freak, so a 9-12 mpg (up to 20%) drop in fuel economy was not acceptable. I proceeded to try 4 more different sets of tires with the same results... lousy gas mileage. I finally did my own research on the internet and found that Nokian makes a tire for the VX (correct size 165/70R13) called the NRT2 that is specifically advertised as a low rolling resistance tire. It was also through my research that I discovered that the OEM tires are usually low rolling resistance tires, and are only made for the manufacturer to put on the vehicle to boost their EPA fuel economy numbers (for the CAFE standards), but that these same factory tires are not available for purchase by the consumer when the tires need to be replaced. The VX tires are a very rare size today and were rare even 8 years ago. My tire salesman recommended moving up one tire size to the more common 175/70R13 where there are potentially more choices available in low rolling resistance tires. I didn't want this size tire because it would skew the odometer mileage, which would have shown fewer miles than actually driven... and I was too obsessed with knowing my true gas mileage (I've seen posts on several forums where people say they improved their mileage by using a bigger diameter tire... I don't see how it's possible). And bigger/heavier tires would mean at least a small fuel economy penalty to offset the improved mileage of low rolling resistance tires.

Anyway, with the Nokians I achieved a respectable 52-54 mpg during non-winter driving AND they handled much much better than the original Dunlops. In fact my first set of Nokians handled better at the end of their life with 80,000 miles on them than the original Dunlops handled fresh off the dealer's lot in 1995. Two sets of Nokians later, I'm almost ready to put my third set of Nokians on the car, which now has 206,000 miles on it.

I discovered, however, that Nokian discontinued the NRT2 in 2004, and all other available Nokian tires in size 165/70R13 aren't as lightweight as the NRT2 nor do they have the low rolling resistance of the NRT2. After considerable research, I found that Vredestein makes a tire called the Quatrac2 in size 165/70R13 which is advertised as a low rolling resistance tire, so I'll buy these within the next 5,000 miles.

Here are my observations about fuel economy. Tire type is one of the biggest factors when there's a big change in fuel economy. Other big factors are 1) tire pressure (keeping them at the maximum pressure labeled on the tire sidewall gives 5-8%

improvement in fuel economy over the recommended tire pressure in the owner's manual) ; 2) cold weather (i.e. 35F and below versus 50F and above), which effects my fuel economy by about 5 - 7 mpg; and 3) Driving habits; no idling or warming up the car, no sudden braking/acceleration, no short trips, limit city driving etc.