#Civic

What does it take to win the Heroic Fix trophy at the heroism-heavy Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons? Frantic engine swaps are a dime a dozen in LeMons racing, but what happens when the replacement engine goes bad?

Having earned its place in the American market by launching focused products at its biggest segments, Honda’s 2010 sales performance proved the danger of chasing niches. In his remarks at the North American International Auto Show, Honda’s John Mendel insisted that

sales of the sporty and stylish CR-Z are also exceeding our expectations with sales of more than 5-thousand vehicles in the first four months. It’s great to see our customers embrace this vehicle … and our effort to push hybrid technology in a sporty direction

but besides proving that expectations for the CR-Z were extremely low, it’s hard to see what he meant. Expectations for the 2012 Honda Civic, on the other hand, are considerably higher.

Some folks will tell you that you need a big ol’ truck to haul a grimy cast-iron V8, but those folks are wrong! My beater ’92 Civic, which stood up well when compared to the Audi R8, not only sports a trailer hitch (no doubt suitable for hauling popcorn carts weighing up to several hundred pounds) but the cargo-area capacity to take a disassembled Chrysler LA engine.

Yesterday’s piece about Honda’s slippage left little doubt that its mojo ain’t quite what it used to be. But there was a time when Honda was on fire, and could do (almost) no wrong. The gen 1 Civic was like a little cherry bomb lobbed into a Weight-Watcher’s convention. Tiny, tinny, rude and crude as it was, the first Civic already embodied the unique qualities, if in somewhat embryonic form, that would revolutionize the American small car market and establish Honda’s meteoric rise. And this gen2 Civic was huge step forward; now instead of wearing a Civic like a badge of honor, one could now actually step into it and think of it as a legitimate car. How civil and civic-minded. But the best was yet to come.

Honda hasn’t always replaced its bread-and-butter compact, the Civic, every five years. The Mk.1 Civic soldiered from 1972 until 1979. The second through fifth generations were replaced on a regular four-year schedule, before Honda settled into a five-year product cadence with the sixth generation (1996-2000). If it were to keep with that cadence, we’d be seeing a ninth-generation Civic sometime this year, replacing the Mk.VIII, which debuted in late 2005. According to Automotive News [sub], however, Honda is holding off on releasing a new Civic until 2011. What gives?

In 2007, over 120,000 Civic Hybrid owners had a beef with Honda. So much so, in fact, that they sued the Japanese company. What do you reckon the reason could be? Unsafe cars? Think again. Poor build quality? No, they sued Honda because their Civic Hybrids didn’t get the stated fuel mileage. New York Times’ Wheels Blog reports that 2 plantiffs, John True of Ontario, California, and Gonzalo Delgado of Chino Hills California along with 120,000 other Honda Civic Hybrid owners argued in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that they were only getting 31 mpg instead of the advertised 49mpg in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. The plaintiffs believe that Honda’s advertising led them to believe that the Civic Hybrid would get better fuel economy than is likely in real world driving. Needless to say, the plaintiffs weren’t challenging the EPA methods of predicting mileage, just that Honda, allegedly, deceived customers by not making it clear that they were unlikely to achieve the EPA figures. Honda, naturally, have a different take.

TTAC commentator SpeedJebus writes:

I’m writing this as I sit in the service department of my Honda Dealership. My car (LINK: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/piston-slap-the-annoying-lazy-civic/) was due for a service, and I had enough: I was going to get results from the dealership regarding my lazy drive by wire system in my 2007 Civic. Long and short, they test drove my car against a new 2009 Civic, and (finally) found that there is definitely something wrong with my car.