What does a Civic owner step up to?

An Si?

The civic is a pretty reasonably sized car (it has the longest wheelbase of the compacts), so maybe it can cover both the compact and smaller-medium classes.

Wait for the ‘11 Civic. It will probably be just as big as your Accord.

“I like Honda’s emphasis on MPG not because it makes a huge difference in my cost of fuel, but because it speaks to a passion for good engineering.”

I thought so too until I saw the fuel economy for the 09 Fit with a manual.

“And FWIW the ‘09 Civic DX now comes standard with AC and radio.”

It’s on the new DX-VP trim level. It costs 700 more than the DX, and 1200 less than the LX. Unfortunately, it’s only available on the sedan, which for 09 has a gag inducing chrome bar between the tail lights. The chrome door handles on the new Accord were bad enough. Please Honda, spare us this garish nonsense. I want to love you but you make it so hard sometimes.

Either of these 2 methods allow the manufacturers to ease the assembly processes of their vehicules. Without having a choose at will, one option at a time list, it simplifies the assembly of the vehicule, and reduces chances of errors.

NA manufacturers let you choose at will basically, one option at a time. Imagine the complexity at the assembly with several million combinations of options for each vehicule as it makes its way down the assembly chain?

With a specific trim level, the combinations are vastly reduced. This allows for improved quality of assembly, and vastly reduces the risks of errors… (like forgetting to install that one option of the tape player in a high end Cadillac SUV and not catching the error until the SUV is delivered to the customer…. now will this customer be happy after spending a good bundle on his truck???)

Quality of assembly can also be affected, if a specific option is not installed often, by the line assemblers. Will he / she remember how to install it? Will it be done properly? yes, there are inspectors further down the line… but why inspect it, if it can be done right the first time…. inspection is a waste process, which can be eliminated if assembly is done right….

With the set trim levels, or set bundles, it reduces the complexity for the manufacturers, and improves quality of assembly, which leads to improved quality of the vehicules..

(I fixed the only rattle by wedging a thin scrap piece of wood between a door’s internal horizontal pipe and the door’s exterior sheet metal. Honda did not apply sufficient amounts of “glue” to keep this sheet metal from rattling in the wind.)

I like Honda, I am a happy Honda customer, and I want to keep buying Honda. What will I replace my 2001 Accord with? The new Accords are now far too big for me. The Civic is too small and I don’t care for the Star Trek thing. Honda has lost its way; they have abandoned the mid-sized segment.

What rule book says that every new generation (of cars) has to be bigger-assed?

My buying options are very limited. I don’t want to buy an Altima because of the issues that Nissan customers are having at their dealers in my local area, but I may have to bite the bullet on this one.

I don’ t like the way the CRV has grown, and it’s too bad they canned the CRX.

Yes, the rattles are annoying. On the other hand, considering the experiences of my friends who have Nissans, VWs and various GM cars, I can live with a few rattles.

Most of the options you list are easily added with dealer installed Honda accessories. Want a CD changer in a Civic?…no problemo. Radio and AC in an ‘08 Civic DX?…no problemo. Of course it’ll usually end up cheaper to buy the higher trim level, but I think that would hold true for most manufacturers.

And FWIW the ‘09 Civic DX now comes standard with AC and radio.

Day-one rattles are case in point. Cars should have 0 rattles day one. It is great that you have had no new rattles, but this is a clear indication of great engineering, crappy quality control.

Also, I think I might have started the shoddy interior side-topic and I completely defend it. As a counterpoint to an earlier post, it is not about millions of vehicles on the road.

I sat in numerous 2008 Odyssey’s before I took delivery and they ALL displayed the same crappy attention to detail. The lower glove box in all of them displayed varying amounts of excessive curve in relation to dash. Not incluing plug screws, excessive molding flash, and on and on.

Honda owns the minivan market and it is evident in how they don’t focus on the little details that finish a car. And this is comparison again to my experience in a 2001 Prelude, which did by the way develop numerous rattles over the years.

I have a 2003 Accord EX sedan (four cylinder) that I bought brand-new in May 2003.

There have been some interior rattles present since it was new.

Interestingly, after 98,000+ miles over Pennsylvania’s less-than-stellar roads, the car has no more rattles than it did since day one.

And the rest of the car has been bulletproof – far more so than my friend’s 2002 Nissan Altima and another friend’s 2001 VW Passat (since dumped for a Subaru).

A very good mechanic friend has a good line for when people say things such as, “I’ve heard a lot of people have problems with that model.” He’d mention that Honda builds close to 400k Accords every year and have been for over a decade. There are millions of them on the road. Of course a couple here and there won’t be perfect. By no means should Honda get a pass on a less than stellar unit, but it’s not indicitive of the entire fleet.

Could be. On the other hand, I’d simply call it lousy, ineffective, inconsistent and/or nonexistent quality control.

That, and Honda dealers’ apparent fixation on volume, also makes it easy to get five or six “internet price quotes” from edmunds or cars.com, get the lowest possible price, and have any dealer match it.

That should be reflected in the “Build Your Toyota” module online. If you build a car there, it may not be possible to find that configuration in your area. To me that is not user friendly and certainly not simple.

I agree with you about the Chevy and Ford methods; they are ridiculous.

Case in point: My fully loaded ‘04 TL. MSRP was $33,200, plus $2k for the Nav. The comparable G35 was pushing $38k back then, the ES330 was $37k+, nevermind a comparably equipped 325i, let alone a comparably engined 330i, or a comparably sized 530i. Even the S60 was more expensive and offered fewer features.

Yes, Toyota is not even #1 in their own nation, for new vehicle sales, and this has been the case for some while.

“Surprising” because not true. Don’t know where you go your info Menno, but you are quite wrong — Toyota’s easily number one and far outsells Suzuki in Japan.

Among regular cars Toyota owns nearly half the market while Suzuki is tiny #6, with Toyota outselling Suzuki nearly 20-to-1.

Suzuki is a major supplier in mini-vehicle Kei-cars (which are not counted in this article’s numbers) but Toyota is #1 this year even there, with its Daihatsu brand outselling Suzuki.

Counting all the vehicles together the Toyota BRAND outsells Suzuki almost 3-1 and the Toyota company including Daihatsu outsells Suzuki 4-1.

A very good mechanic friend has a good line for when people say things such as, “I’ve heard a lot of people have problems with that model.” He’d mention that Honda builds close to 400k Accords every year and have been for over a decade. There are millions of them on the road. Of course a couple here and there won’t be perfect. By no means should Honda get a pass on a less than stellar unit, but it’s not indicitive of the entire fleet.

Case in point, I drove a 1990 Taurus to 200k with no more work than a water pump and standard maintenance. Someone up thread called theirs a POS. I won’t touch VW with a ten foot pole because of their problems but anytime their quality issues are brought up someone mentions their high mile VW’s. There’s good and bad units in any model run, but Honda has consistently had more of the good ones than most other companies and that’s what counts.

Take three year old minivans for example. A base level Odyssey isn’t much cheaper than a new Odyssey, while a three-year-old base level Crysler minivan can be found for $9000 at least here in Detroit. For the price of one used Odyssey, I could pick up nearly two used Chrysler minivans from the same year!

Same with the Civics and Accords. Boy are the used ones expensive. Three year old Civics are basically selling at new car prices around here. Heck, I could buy a three-year-old BMW 3 series for almost the same money!

You’re looking out the wrong window. Here in Hawaii I see plenty of Mazdas. In fact I see more 6s than new Accords. I’m starting to see a lot more 5s as well. Of course I see my 6 every day. :-)

Toyota’s method of having many options to choose from isn’t very simple and certainly not user friendly online. Honda’s system is much simpler. You choose the trim level, drivetrain/engine, and color and that’s it. There are a few dealer options to select if you want (splash guards, spoilers, etc…) There is no simple package “A or B” with Toyota. You have to pick all the options seperately. Some may like it better that way, but I think it’s overly complex for many people.

Not quite true. In a Chevy or (especially) Ford, you have to pick options separately, leaving millions upon millions of permutations, many of which are built.

In a Toyota, options are bundled together into packages. It doesn’t show on the window sticker, but that’s how Toyota does it. This is arranged in advance with the dealer network, and done regionally: they decide what options will be desirable, bundle them into 7 or 8 combinations, and then factory builds those. Example: I bought an ‘09 Corolla in April. I wanted stability/traction control; that was a non-negotiable point. VSC was a midrange option (not an option like power locks and keyless, that one could find as the only option set on the car), so the package that it came in also included: keyless entry, power windows, 6-disc CD changer, floor mats, all-weather guard pkg. (added to all Midwestern Corollas), and cruise control. So, that’s a bundled package. It doesn’t look like that from reading the options list at ConsumerGuide and the like, but that is how you would find them on dealer lots.

Toyota would build one for you with a single option, but you’d probably have to pay sticker, and you’d have to wait a month or two, according to my dealer, so I could have had a base Corolla S with just VSC if I’d really pushed the point, but I probably got a better deal in the end by buying into the package (and I wanted the power windows, cruise, and floor mats, too, anyway, and the CD changer is great), since I negotiated a fair chunk off the sticker.

As a note, I understand Honda’s simplified trim level system, but it does make it hard to get some features. Up through ‘08, you could not buy a Civic (except the Si) with stability/traction control. Now I guess it’ll be available on EX-Ls or something. You can’t get a CD changer, full stop. Does everyone want/need these? No, but some customers do. It gets a bit ridiculous with a limited trim selection; you take a massive bump in price. There’s a $2k gap between the DX and LX, and the DX has no radio AT ALL, no A/C, etc., etc. So if A/C were non-negotiable, and in most of the country it can be pretty important, you just paid $2,000 to get it, because you had to buy an LX. It’s another $1,800 from the LX to the EX. The EX adds a moonroof, and then a bunch of auxiliary things that 50% of people will never notice (like an extra set of cupholders for the back, an extra power outlet, and a SPLIT-folding bench seat. What if I like the LX, but really want a moonroof? I just paid two grand extra.

I’m sure it’s simpler for Honda’s dealer network, but Toyota manages well, and probably gets extra sales volume, because with six or seven informal “packages” of options, people can find what they want without being driven all the way to the most expensive trim level. I’m sure that Honda makes some extra cash by up-selling trim levels, but I also know they probably lose customers that way. The lack of optional stability control on the Civic was one of the main reasons I sprang for the Corolla instead, since they’re both very impressive cars.

Honda counters this by proliferating trim levels. As of 2009, for sedans they’ve got:
DX
DX-VP
LX
LX-S
EX
EX-L
Si
Mugen Si
Hybrid
GX

In its way, that’s got to be pretty complicated, too.
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I normally do that method when I bought new – but as of late I just don’t see it in my to buy a new car sans maybe the newer and more powerful WRX hatchback with 265hp (a pretty good deal). My wife’s TSX is doing just fine and is great to drive – even when I am making her take high performance driving lessons (got it for her bday).

I’m reminded of a passage I read 25 years ago in Brock Yates’ opus, The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry: “A Yale physicist whimsically calculated that a 1965 Chevrolet, offered in 46 models, 32 different engines, 20 transmissions, 30 colors, and 400 options, could be purchased in almost as many permutations as there are atoms in the universe.”

For the domestics, things still haven’t changed much in the past 40 years.

I see Honda more as putting a lot of fully-featured cars on their lots — just buy the “loaded” version, and Honda will be glad to take your money for all of the extras, whether you wanted them or not.

I’ll also second the mention of shoddy, shoddy, shoddy interior build quality — I’ll never touch another Honda given the horror story Accord I had to bail out of because it was such a rattletrap POS.

Enough of that, though — I think the coming challenges for Honda, at least in the US market, will be the insanely putrid, horrifying “styling” they have been inflicting upon new models — every new model they introduce seems to be taking a bigger swing at out-uglying the all-time-leading Aztek.

And, the other challenge will be the cobbled-together five-speed automatic transmission that they’ll barely keep running by slapping band-aids on it. While other manufacturers are offering six speeds and beyond, Honda is still trying to get its five-speed to last with any of its V6 engines, by means of the afore-mentioned band-aid slapping. Just Google for “honda transmission jet kit,” and you’ll begin to comprehend your chances of the transmission outliving the water pump in your precious new Honda.

Honda built itself quite a reputation in the past, but I see chunks falling off the wings as we fly into the twenty-first century. Just watch Hyundai/Kia eat Honda’s lunch — just watch.