The Truth About Cars » Honda Civic Wagovan

Ready For The Wagovan Redux?

Derek Kreindler — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:41:58 +0000

Hyundai revived an old nameplate for their 5-door version of the Elantra. So how about a return of the Wagovan?

According to USA Today

“The next generation is expected around 2016. It will have multiple body styles – a 5-door hatchback is under consideration for North America – as well as many different powertrains.”

The Wagonvan was a 5-door hatchback Civic sold in the 1980s that featured one of the first iterations of Honda’s RealTime 4WD system. The next generation of the Civic will be developed under the supervision of Honda’s North American arm – so a tall wagon variant is a possibility. At this price point, all-wheel drive may not make the cut.

Junkyard Find: 1984 Honda Civic Wagovan

Murilee Martin — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:00:33 +0000

The four-wheel-drive Honda Civic “Wagovan” was very popular in Colorado, and you still see them on the street around here. The front-wheel-drive version, however, is quite rare throughout North America. It was a very sensible family hauler, with its high-30s highway fuel economy and big-for-its-size cargo space, but it couldn’t compete with Chrysler’s minivans. Here’s a rare example that I spotted last week in a Denver self-service yard.
In fact, Honda didn’t come up with any sort of Suburbia Main Battle Tank until the Passport, a decade later, and that was really an Isuzu (the first-gen Odyssey was a genuine Honda and ideally suited for the growing family with a lot of accessories… in Japan).
So, what we have here is a tall Civic with a squared-off cargo area. You could fit four adults and the results of a serious big-box-retail shopping spree inside, and then you could drive it for 250,000 miles (provided you never overheated it and blew the head gasket).
Here’s why I will never own one of these cars. You couldn’t get the Wagovan with the Si fuel-injected engine, and there’s no way to make a 25-year-old nightmare tangle of vacuum lines, solenoids, sensors, and black boxes work correctly. Look, this one has multiple layers on the vacuum-hose diagram. It’s had versioning!

Junkyard Find: 1987 Honda Civic 4WD Wagon

Murilee Martin — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 20:00:59 +0000

Living in Denver gives me a great perspective on the history of the four-wheel-drive car. Nowadays, it’s pretty much an all-Subaru affair around these parts (an observer who never left Denver would make the extrapolation that Subaru is one of the top-selling— if not the top-selling— marques in the world), but there was a time when Eagles and 4WD Tercels and many others slugged it out with the machines from Fuji Heavy. Here’s an example of Honda’s nearly-forgotten four-wheel-drive wagon, finally heading for The Crusher’s cold jaws after nearly a quarter-century of work.
By 1987, Honda had pretty well cemented its popular reputation as a builder of sensible, well-built cars. The Civic 4WD Wagovan seemed like a good bet to sip gas, run 200,000 miles, and crunch through the Colorado winter snow without getting stuck pulling out of the driveway.
The “Real-Time” four-wheel-drive system was just another way of saying “We know you stupid drivers can’t figure out when to engage four-wheel-drive, so we’ll just leave it going at all times.” Sure, it cost a few miles per gallon and added complexity, but it made the car an easier sell.

The Tercel 4WD wagon (which was much more this car’s competitor than anything from Subaru) had a lever that enabled four-wheel-drive, and its lack of a center differential meant that you’d beat up the drivetrain and/or tires if you drove it on dry pavement in 4WD. In addition, the Tercel had an archaic longitudinal-engine-above-front-differential arrangement that jacked up the center of gravity and made the car less aerodynamic. However, you couldn’t kill the Tercel with a Blue Steel missile, and the Civic suffered from the same weakness that afflicted all Hondas of this era: overheat it once and you’ll blow the head gasket.
With just 76 horsepower under the hood, the Civic Wagovan still managed to be more fun to drive than the competition (although you could still get the AMC Eagle, which was way more fun for mud-soaked off-road madness, in 1987).
I haven’t seen one of these things on the street, even in Denver, for quite a while. Several live on in 24 Hours of LeMons racing, however, and their teams are waiting for the race when it pours rain from start to finish… at which point they’ll get their doors blown right off by the Audi Quattros and 90s Subarus.