![]() That last part is what I look for in any vehicle, and anything I’ll put my family in. The 2008 Honda Civic is plain, boring, and slow, but you can trust the thing with your life, and it’ll get you from point A to point B with absolutely zero drama. I wish this sort of reliability and inexpensive maintenance on all vehicle owners. Last problem was a catalytic converter heat shield that rusted through and was rattling at certain RPMs. Not a single major problem that required any significant amount of time in the shop. Fuel efficient, sure, but it’s a hybrid and that’s what it’s built for. The most reliable car I’ve ever owned, bar none. This car has taken me many places, with two trips to Chapel Hill, NC in the past 4 months passing without a whiff of a problem.Ībove all, the car is reliable. I knew this going into the purchase, and had I not accepted it from the word “go” I wouldn’t have held on to the car for 10 years. ![]() I put a decal on the back that says “0-60 Eventually” and, while it may look like a joke, it’s completely true. Other than that, I’ve been feeding it new fluids when it needs ’em, and slapping new tires on when necessary. The hybrid battery was replaced under warranty 40,000 miles ago. The clear coat has long failed (known problem with 8th-generation Honda Civics both pre- and post-refresh). It’s been almost 10 and a half years since that Civic first sat in the driveway in front of the house, and took up residence on the right side of the garage. Brought it home, started rackin’ up the miles. ![]() Not only a Civic, but a Civic Hybrid, the weird one. The Solara had more power out of its 2.4L 4-cylinder than the Cadillac ever did.īut … 10 years ago, I reversed my thought process about the Civic and bought one. The 1988 Sedan deVille had maybe 150hp, despite having a 4.7L V8 under the hood. I’m not saying my car was fast by any means - the 1987 Mercury Sable GS I started with probably had 140hp out of its V6 on a good day, and it never had good days. Seems like Civic owners always wanted to race me at traffic lights, revving their engines and whatnot. They were cheap, they were slow, and people did really stupid and ugly things to them, and that annoyed the hell out of me. The main target of my automotive ire back in the late ’90s was the ubiquitous Honda Civic. Half a lifetime ago, at some point in high school, I naively subscribed to the “friends don’t let friends drive imports” “philosophy.” The rumors of reliability at the expense of excitement started to weigh heavily on my mind, and eventually I went from a 1988 Cadillac Sedan deVille to a 2002 Toyota Camry Solara SE. May they be as trouble-free as the last.Īuthor me Posted on Categories Cars A Time for Everything Here’s to another 11 years with this little beastie. Did I mention the trunk space? This is the hatchback, and the rear seats fold down, so there’s a ton of room back there. So, I still need to get used to the new features - the technology, the convenience, the power, the trunk space. That’s right - my never-ending crusade to eliminate all of the chrome bodywork from the hybrid was not in vain! Oh, and added bonus? Not an ounce of chrome bodywork on the entire thing. Not all that much more to ask for, really. It has all of the features I needed and wanted, and fits into my garage with room to spare. This is probably the first time I’ve gone out and bought exactly what I wanted. However, it appears that Honda has taken to slapping little hair dryer lookin’ things onto them (that’s a turbo for those who aren’t sure what I mean), so in spite of there being only an extra 0.2L of displacement, this thing puts out twice the horsepower and has a torque curve that looks like a table. There’s not that much more under the hood in the displacement department: the hybrid had a 1.3L 4-cylinder, and this one’s a 1.5L 4-cylinder. “Aegean Blue Metallic” they call it, and in person, it looks absolutely fantastic. After a month and a half of thinking and agonizing and researching and testing, I am the proud owner of a Honda Civic … just not the one I had before.
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