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Comments: 1-15, 16-17
Valves went out of adjustment at 6k!! (this is honda's quality?)
I bought this car because of all the praise and awards it receives from both automotive publications and people who own them. Unfortunately my civic leaves much to be desired and i am regretful that i ever bought it. Now the interior looks very nice and modern and the materials seem to be of high quality but my car has been absolutely PLAGUED with rattles and have even had trim peices fall off for no real reason such as leaning my leg against the door and having the entire door panel come loose. Then theres the near total lack of insulation. The interior is very noisy and the ride is very hard. Road noise makes its way into the cabin almost unfiltered and you feel every imperfection in the road. Not to mention how the interior trim (dashboard especially) shudders and rattles over bumps and rough pavement. Next is the performance which is not bad but not even close to good nevermind class leading and despite what some noodles say NO stock civic is really fast SI type R or otherwise. Handling is decent but considering this car rides harder than my dad's corvette i would rank it as terrible in relation to other compact cars handling:ride ratio.
Well some may think i am expecting to much of this car you must remember that i am expecting a car that acts like it really deserves it's car of the year award, and i am also expecting to get that great bargain that I was promised. In the end i found this car be no better than midpack as far as the compact hierarchy goes. I also always back my opinions by leaving AIM screen name which is mxbrick and am always open to debate (not to be confused with arguing) over my opinions.
Once again you forget that a Civic is an Economy car. WHY do you think it only has a 1.8 liter engine tuned to get 38 mpg's? As for the valves needing ajustment it could have been just the engine breaking in and just needing some fine attention needed to tuning it up. My Honda has 249,000 miles and if I gave up on it because of valve adjustment it would be crazy. My neighbor has 230,000 miles on his 1.6 liter; and two friends of mine have 235,000 miles on their Crv and 250,000 miles on their 94 Accord respectively. This represents just a few of many Honda vehicles on the road and sometime or another we have had to have our valves adjusted at least once because it is a feature of Honda engines so they can be tuned up so there is no valve chatter.
Happy motoring--John.
"Once again you forget that a Civic is an Economy car."
-john
"In the end I found this car be no better than midpack as far as the COMPACT hierarchy goes"
-original poster.
I didn't forget that it was an economy car. But the fact that it's an economy car is no excuse for it to rattle, chatter, and clip-clop over every imperfection in the road and there is no excuse for ANY car (especially a Honda) to be assembled so poorly that interior panels come loose and even fall off at only 6-8k miles.
Now about the valves. I have never had any car need a valve adjustment at 6k miles and this was not part of a regular service either the valves were clattering badly enough for me to hear them clearly at just about all times and the service dept. said that "it was definately not supposed to happen".
I get it... no car manufacturer can ever have a defect because God built the car... O I praise you almighty car God!!! Bless me with no defects please... man my Honda made it to 250,000 miles without any problems... maybe just like a ford salesman on here I should go buy a Ford...you'll see me on here next week crying and complaining my head off cause the damn thing won't start and started my house on fire!!!
Wll I don't own a Ford, but I do own a Chevy for 6 years now and you know what it still starts and hasn't burned my house down neither has my neighbors Dodges or my other neighbors Volvos or the Acura/Honda TSX across the street and they ALL still run, hey even my friends Ford F150 hasn't suffered these problems. I believe your just an uppity Honda lover who believes they can do no fowl. In this day and age all cars can run up into six digit mileage reliably (personal experience) so now all that's left to grade the car on is build quality which My Honda sorely lacked. Not all honda's may have this problem, but mine did and so far it's my only car I've ever owned to have such problems. Darn preachers.
My experience with a Civic was anything bit good. It had the worst build quality of any car I ever owned with the exception of a Mazda. I have much better luck with domestics.
My 1994 Honda just rolled over to 250,000 miles today. I have had a lot better luck with this car than any of our domestics. 10 years ago our family had at least 12 domestics accounted for in all of our driving fleet... today we have only 1 left and that is the PT Cruiser that never gets driven anyway, but was bought because it seemed very cool back in 2000.
Unlike Toyota, Honda does seem to be holding its quality level pretty high with the exception of their automatic transmissions (we seem designed to self-destruct at 50,000 miles). I just wish they had some designers who knew how to build good looking cars. Except for Nissan it seems like all the Japanese cars are bland and boring.
Why does every import owner claim to have just recently rolled over 250,000... oh well glad your having better luck than I am with your Honda.
My self destructing Honda Transmission has 150,ooo miles on it with no rebuilt or replacement. although it is the Accord V6 it shifts strongly. It is a lot smoother than our 1997 and 1996 Accords--if you know what I mean--the older transmissions seemed to jerk alittle more than the newer four speed autos in the 98-2002 models.
"Acura, which is a Honda with $10,000 tacked on"
No it's actually a euro spec Honda which means it's even smaller with worse build quality than a regular Honda with more like $15,000 tacked on and 2 cylinders cut off. Just wanted to make that clear as a not so proud or satisfied Acura tsx owner.
Update from the original poster: transmission has officially eaten second gear car in shop for who knows how long... Contemplating taking my losses and buying a Ford crown victoria when the civic gets out of the shop. Can't be any worse than the Honda has been.
"80 mph is not mentioned" maybe not exactly, but they sure do say over the highway speed limit in about 90% of websites that talk about the crown vic fire problems (which have only happened in Police interceptors so far). But you all fail to understand the real point that the civic would fold like a cheap tent if it were hit under the same conditions.
I tried the civic for a whole month, and to be honest I will never by one. I believe the manufacturing company has compromised on many things for the sake of winning the word "economic car".
The interior is very simple and boring, seats are not comfy, the car is noisy specially when you drive on high speed you can hear the wind from the side mirrors. It is a rigid car and lacks for flexibility on roads and difficult to drive. You don't feel the smooth driving, but you have to struggle a little bit with it.
06:29 Well, you said it yourself. You've just described an 'economy car'. They're made to get you from A-B reliably and cost efficiently. That's all.
I actually enjoy the simplicity. It's just a car; transportation. I actually like it a lot more than almost all of the gaudy, overdone cars and SUV's with dvd players, and so many accessories that the thing looks like an overdecorated Christmas tree inside. That's just more useless crap that might break in my book. I like a manual shift, a speedo and tachometer, and a steering wheel and stereo. Pure and simple driving experience.
I see a lot of comments stating that import quality has "gone down in recent years". That seems odd, because the worst experience I've had with a Civic was an '89. It was one of the most poorly built cars I've ever driven. At 40,000 miles it was using about a quart of oil every 500 miles and the CV joints were clattering. It never even made it to 100,000 miles and was sold to a junk dealer as salvage with a blown engine. There isn't room on this site to list all the problems that car had. We traded our last import for a Ford in 1999 and don't plan on buying any more imports.